No Room to Swing a Cat
by KimotoCat
Summary: [Finished!] Fifth Doctor. A princess locked in a web of tradition and conservatism find herself unable to escape a dull fate when suddenly a blue police box appears in a storage room in the palace…
1. No Room to Swing a Cat Part 1

**No Room to Swing a Cat **

_This is my first attempt at a who-fic. Please be nice, but remember that I can take all kinds of criticism as I prefer flame to ignorance. You may find that there is very little actual Doctor in the first parts of this story, but you need not worry – he and Tegan are on their way and will become central as things develop._

o o o

The car was skidding again. The young woman was fighting to stay in control, twisting the steering wheel and trying to force the vehicle into submission if not by the laws of physics, then by sheer willpower.

The lime-green hatchback swerved dangerously, but then the tires regained their grip on the tarmac and sent the car off down the road at maddening speed. It was but 70 or 80 kilometres an hour, but through the heavy noon city traffic, it was anything but safe.

Kimoto Takita furiously hung onto the wheel as if for dear life; her small but solid claws carved into the leather and her emerald eyes darted to and fro, searching for an escape even as three black cars took the same turn behind her and at almost the same breakneck speed. This time, a pedestrian had to jump for his life, and one of the black cars swerved as if to avoid him, only to careen sideways into the solid concrete of the building at the opposite side where it seemed stuck for the moment.

Kim could have screamed out her delight at decimating the pursuers, but instead she gritted her teeth, swearing silently in her mother's tongue, knowing full well that the men in the cars would rarely have hesitated on their way to apprehend her - not because of some civilian bystander. The black cars were built to handle the kind of damage sustained from such impact and she was pretty certain that the one car had lost control rather than actually tried to avoid the hapless pedestrian.

Life, she thought to herself, narrowly avoiding another parked car and looking for another turn; another way to loose the remaining pursuers, was rarely a very decent thing. Especially not to the kind of unsuspecting civilians - normal people - crowding the city these days.

They had gotten what they wanted. The ancient Empire had returned, just as some prophecies had promised, and the Takita family held the throne of Honshu II in a firm grip; heeding the old ways and upholding the codes. Her teacher had admonished her innumerable times, reminding her that the ways of old were what the ancestors of these people had craved more than three hundred years ago when they instated the Empire again.

Harrumphing to herself and making another dangerously close pass of some innocent person's car, she bared her canines and frowned. What insanity had placed the Takita family in such a place of power? Who, in their right mind, had wished for the ways of old to befall a planet, part of the Terran Coalition, after several thousand years of developing into modern life, democracy and individualism?

For the life of her, she didn't understand it.

And that was why she took the next road left at speeds that her every instinct warned her against. There was a gap in the oncoming traffic and she seized the chance to drive through it, aiming for the narrower road to somewhere else.

The young man on the bike would not have had a chance, had it been one of the black cars, but when Kim spotted him as if in the crosshairs formed by the front end of the hatchback, she yanked the wheel the other way and tried desperately to pull the lime car sideways so that it would pass behind him.

The biker had stopped, supporting himself and his bike on one foot, staring at her much the same way a hare would stare at an oncoming car. This, sadly, did not leave enough space behind him for the vehicle to squeeze through.

She tried anyway.

And failed.

With a sound like the dying screams of some unnatural monster, the lime finish was scraped off the right side of the hatchback along with parts of the door and various other bits and pieces. The wheels of that side also were damaged beyond the ability to carry the vehicle any further. The biker had thrown himself sideways at the absolutely last moment, just avoiding the car, and now lay sprawled on the tarmac, still staring at the wreck as it lost momentum and stopped.

The driver's door was torn open and a woman jumped out, green eyes flashing and barely offering him a second glance before starting to run down the road she had tried to drive down, her tail lashing behind her.

Her tail?

The man started to get to his feet, trying to absorb that he had narrowly escaped serious injury or even death as a car, driven by what seemed to be one of the rare sheerar women, had been close to running him over.

It was ironic that he was too occupied by this thought to avoid the impact of the black sedan as it skidded to a halt next to the green hatchback. He was lucky, though, as he woke up in hospital finding that he had been admitted to one of the best wards in this part of the world and that expenses and a very handsome damage payment were all being taken care off by others - provided that he failed to mention the sheerar female to anybody. This, he reasoned, made sense and he only told it to his wife some seven years later on the festive evening of their second anniversary.

Kim was running for her life, but her chances were diminishing. She heard one of the cars behind her brake and she heard the ugly thump and crashing sound of what was unmistakably a person being hit by a car.

One of the black cars passed her, made half a U-turn and had men poring from it before it had stopped. The other car had stopped behind her and she could hear running feet from that angle as well.

o o o

Kim tried to make for the door of a shop, any shop, but felt the all too familiar stabbing pain before she had even focused on a door. The small needle like arrows hit as precisely as always and again she felt a peculiar admiration for the efficiency and perfection of the men employed by her father.

She wondered if this really was an unattainable dream as she descended into a warm, quiet darkness. The last thing she noticed were gentle arms preventing her from actually falling to the ground.

Gentle arms... She felt that so rarely these days...

o o o

The bed was immaculate. The upholstery was the best that money could buy and some of the décor of the room was beyond what money could buy.

But it did little to soothe the young girl in the bed.

Kim was recovering from the anaesthetic administered by the Imperial Guard as they had apprehended her somewhere downtown. It was not an unfamiliar feeling as this had happened, what, seven or eight times before? And, as always, once she came round, the drug wore off within minutes.

After her first attempt at going outside the palace for a taste of a freedom that had been denied for too long, she had made what could best be described as a scene when the guards found her. After that, at her second escape, her father had ordered the use of drugs to prevent any more scenes.

So far, it had worked. How the accidental maiming and injuring of civilians during the guards' pursuit did not count as scenes, she failed to guess. She didn't know if that often happened, but she knew that this time out, the young man on the bike had been a victim.

Tossing in the sheets, she wondered again if she was just being a spoiled little rich girl and if the risks for others were risks she was allowed to take? That man on the bike could be dead for all she knew. Would his blood be on her hands?

She hid under the silk blanket and bit her lower lip till she tasted metal.

She discovered that she didn't care if it was because she was spoiled or not. If this was being spoiled, then she would remain spoiled and keep up her attempts at fleeing the palace. It was a cage with golden bars and jewelled linings, but it was a cage all the same and she detested it. Hated it. Abhorred it beyond her wildest dreams.

Wild...

That was what her father saw her as: A wild beast to be tamed and put to use, much like Tagreen, the tiger.

She missed her freedom, but she missed Tagreen almost more bitterly. That tiger had been more than a palace pet or a thing for the décor, he had been a friend.

Her friend.

And that was why she had killed him three months ago.

After seven years of building a close relationship between herself and the snow white tiger with the deep blue eyes, some advisor had whispered corrupt ideas to her father. 'The princess is part feline,' he had said. 'The tiger is male and people are starting to gossip. It would be unfortunate if people found anything unnatural to take place between the princess and her beloved tiger!'

Unnatural indeed! And what, Kim wondered for the nth time, was not unnatural by the way her father had made her mother, his concubine, bear her? Meeriun was sheerar: A huge, golden and highly intelligent feline, walking on all four most of the time, but fully as intelligent as most humans. She had been a beauty, a wild and yet sophisticated creature, and she had been made the concubine of the Emperor. The human Emperor!

For reasons beyond Kim's grasp, it had been seen as a sign of social prowess amongst human males to court sheerar females. And it seemed quite acceptable for the Emperor to have such a gracious being amongst his concubines.

Statistics made for less than one percent of such relations to bear any fruit and more basic laws of genetics and inheritance disallowed any such thing all together. But it happened, from time to time, and a rare few of such offspring - always females - survived their first difficult years to reach adolescence and eventually adulthood. Most became courtesans as they were valued in this trade and were unable to conceive. The rest tried, often in vain, to lead normal lives in spite of their special appearances as a cross between a great feline and a human.

Kimoto Takita was one such living half-sheerar woman. Well, teen anyway. She was not destined to become a courtesan as she was a princess, but she found the bickering regarding the unnatural occurrences between herself and Tagreen was so ridiculous that she paid it little attention.

Until her father decreed that Tagreen should be taken from her and given to a zoo on one of the other coalition planets - as far away from Kim as at all possible.

Caging a huge tiger for interstellar transport would imply the use of heavy drugs. It would risk his life and he would not stand a chance in a zoo with other, wilder, tigers. If he survived the journey, he would have little chance of making it in a zoo unless he was placed in a solitary cage. Solitary... Alone...

So Kim had played with him, rolled in the park with him, pretending to him that it was but another game and to the guards that she was having a last bout before the parting. They had played it roughly, as always, and he had minded the small sting very little.

He had fallen asleep almost instantly and was dead within the minute.

Kim had been too sad, too angry, to shed any tears before the curious eyes of either guards nor servants.

Not that day.

Only in the darkness in lonely nights, unseen by anybody, did she mourn the loss of her friend, but at least now Tagreen was free.

Kimoto Takita was anything but free. She pouted a little and licked a few drops of blood from her bitten lip before she finally emerged from under the silk linen to look at the all too familiar room.

Other girls her age had small rooms with posters of well known boy bands, sports people, loved ones and the likes on the wall; painted in nice colours, furnished with comfortable furniture and perhaps equipped with a suitable computer or console.

Not this young girl.

The bedroom was the size of a small ballroom and had a bed in it, big enough to have five or six people resting comfortably all at once. The chairs along the one wall were plated with gold and cushioned with silk, and the vase in the corner could, if filled with water, substitute for a kiddie pool.

The three women at the foot of the bed also wore expensive silk kimonos and their hair was donned in such a fashion as to defy gravity. They all looked at Kim with eyes lined in black and faces powdered to a pale complexion, and none of them spoke.

"Yaaaah," Kim yawned and hid her face under the blankets again. "Mmmm awake now, I'm fine. Go away. Please."

"I am sorry, your highness," one of the women said, curtseying slightly as she spoke. "But your father has given orders to prepare you to see him as soon as you are fit to do so."

"Father?" Kim exclaimed, rolling out of bed and tossing the blanket down, staring at the woman in the pink kimono. "What does he want, Allindra?"

"I am sure he will let you know, your highness," Allindra said. "I beg of you to allow us to do our job. His Imperial Majesty would be most upset if you do not meet him soon and in proper attire."

"Proper..." Kim muttered, more to herself. "It would show him a thing or two if I came in miniskirt and a tank top showing my belly button, wouldn't it?"

"You jest, highness," Allindra smiled as she started to help Kim out of the light gown she had been wearing during her sedation.

"Yeah, I do," the young princess smiled back. "T'would kill him right there and then it would, and I wouldn't inherit the throne anyway."

The other women did not say anything, instead they started to help Kim into the formal dress required when she was to meet with her father. Allindra had been her trusted maid for years and in spite of the formal tone, a deep respect had grown between the older woman and the young sheerar-crossbreed.

They combed her long tabby hair and oiled it with expensive oils before arranging it into a complex hairstyle adorned with silver and a few well placed emerald studded pins. She refused the white for the face, as always, but accepted rouge to underline her almost triangular face. They didn't even ask if she wanted the dark eyeliner as they knew that her sensitive feline eyes would water from the dye and that this would not look good.

She graciously accepted a few red silk ribbons wound loosely around her tail, more as a subtle match with the mouse grey and red rimmed outer kimono than any real décor. The golden ring in her one ear was left as it was and silver bands placed around her neck and wrists and, almost as a long tradition, Allindra asked if she should oil or wax the whiskers - which Kim, also traditionally, refused.

Slipping into a pair of handcrafted silk sandals, Kimoto Takita, princess of Honshu, was finally ready to go see her father, Emperor Inin Takita IV of Honshu.

And she was not looking forward to it.

o o o

Meanwhile, in another time, at another place - approximately.

"Doctor?" Tegan Jovanka was trying to discern what part of the mess on the floor was the Doctor and what was but strange objects from the console. It looked as if her friend had opened a door into the console and from that exhumed every last cable, wire, strange object and piece of indefinable machinery that he could possibly fit into the surrounding room. "Doctor? What are you doing?"

There was no immediate answer from the other end of the legs that poked out from under the console.

"Is there a problem?"

As if to answer the Australian's question, the floor lurched and threw her onto it as everything seemingly wobbled like the floor of a roller coaster. The lights dimmed briefly and the otherwise stable hum of the TARDIS struck a discord. Just before everything turned really bad, it all stabilized again and the Doctor came out, his face a grimace between pain and puzzlement.

"That was odd," he observed, resting a hand on the edge of the console and running the other over his head where a large bruise was already forming. "Really quite odd!"

"Doctor!" Tegan's voice cut through the settling dust of the room as she looked at him, accusation in her eyes. "What was that?"

"Ah, a bit of a delay, I'm afraid," the Doctor said as he got up.

"Delay?"

"Yes, there seem to be a slight problem here. Some of the cables of the influx booster stabilizer have been seared and are malfunctioning"

"Can't you just get another cable then?" Tegan asked as she, too, got up from the floor, making sure that she had injured nothing other than her dignity. Again.

"Well, that's the problem, really. You see, it has to be a vulcanized 07 beta-cord made from an alloy of-"

"Save me the technicalities," she moaned and sat down on a welcome chair. "What does it mean?"

"It means," the Doctor smiled, pushing a few buttons on the console and observing with some smugness as the central column continued to rise and fall unabated by the earlier events, "that we have to get new cables before we can fix the old girl."

"And until we do?"

"I'll have to make a few adjustments to the influx boosters."

Tegan sighed, kicked off her shoes and pulled her feet up on the chair. She knew only too well when the Doctor became like this. He would rummage on and inside the console, pushing buttons, pulling cables and no matter what she said, he would not supply her with any useful information before she started to yell at him. And even then there was a real chance that he would not give anything.

As it was, she could just as well go for some tea. After all, this could easily take a lot of time.

o o o

_To be continued…_


	2. No Room to Swing a Cat Part 2

**No Room to Swing a Cat**

_As Kim's predicament increases, a TARDIS is approaching..._

_I know, I know... Please be patient with this - there is a little more Doctor in this part, but he is going to play a much larger role than Kim ever expected... (Nervous grin...)_

Part 2

The route to the central palace, where the Emperor himself dwelled, was long and complex. In spite of the people's love for their Emperor, security was so tight that even now, wearing the official attire and guided by palace staff, obviously having entered the palace grounds through another checkpoint, they were withheld at several places for routine control.

Kim hated this almost as much as she hated the incarceration following being a princess and a daughter of the Emperor.

Oh, they treated her with great respect and their apologies did not seem token at all - in fact she was quite certain that she saw fear in the eyes of a younger guard at one of the posts. But then, contrary to the strained relationship between father and daughter, she still was a direct descendant of the Emperor. Being a hybrid, called a bastard by some, she was still in the direct bloodline of a man who was known both as a great ruler, a slave to the Codes and an unforgiving foe to those daring to cross him.

The code, yeah.

Millennia ago, when humankind had but one planet, there had been a small but obviously significant land: Japan, where old traditions vowed by the codes of the warriors, the codes of honour and the codes of the sword. Bushido, it was called. And as part of the events leading to the forming of the Honshu II Empire, people had strived to attain former glory and honour. Bushido had been adapted into the new Empire and was now part of the very foundation under the throne.

Honshu was, in Kim's opinion, a bastard as much as she was. Some people lived by the codes, even some parts of the military were trained according to code, knowing both modern warfare and ancient sword handling. The imperial family were all expected to live their entire lives according to the Codes and yet, Kim knew many people in the rest of the world lived normal, happy lives. Yes, they knew the Codes, learned about them at school, but they did not have to submit to them one hundred percent the way any Takita did.

This was odd, but it was what a vast majority had demanded during the revolution, 342 years ago, and since then, there had truly been very little upheaval to the existing system of totalitarian imperial regime, as conducted by a straight line of descendants of the House Takita.

"His imperial majesty awaits you!"

The statement, made by a guard in the traditional samurai uniform and still carrying an impressive automatic rifle along with the katana sword, drew Kim from her sombre thoughts and back to the present. The man bowed to her, a model of the astute samurai, loyal beyond any doubt and putting his life up for the Emperor should the need arise.

Now was not the time for anybody to subject their lives. Not quite literally anyway. Several others drew open the sliding doors with a soft whisper and kneeled before the young princess, offering her admittance to the holiest of holies: the Imperial Quarters and presently the room in which her father was waiting.

Inin Takita was a small, compact man, seated on a small stool on a dais at the end of the room, surrounded by his advisors and councillors and presently listening to the tranquil sounds of the shamisen as played by three skilled female musicians, supported by the hoarse whimper of a bamboo flute. He was wearing kimonos almost casual for his style, still lending little to the normal interpretation of the term, and his face showed little emotion save a touch of liking of the traditional music.

Kim also loved the old Japanese music. She had some skill with the shamisen herself, but nowhere near what these musicians were playing. Expressionless in their mimics and almost rigid in posture, they allowed their instruments to have all the attention of the listeners, and even if she had been summoned here, against her wishes and after what could only be seen as another failed attempt at disobedience, Kim stopped inside the room while the door was whisked closed behind her.

Accepting the codes of conduct, so important to her father and to everybody here and so much a part of her upbringing, the young sheerar half-breed sat down quietly on a cushion near the door and waited while the gagaku, the music for the imperial court, continued.

The music played for a few more minutes and then came to a halt. There was no applause, but the Emperor nodded his consent and several of the other people smiled at the musicians, who bowed deeply before the dais and then got up and left the room quietly, bringing their instruments. Applause was not part of the Code, and it was also not necessary as the musicians knew full well from the faces around them that their art had been appreciated.

As a door at the one side of the room was opened, allowing the musicians to leave, the Emperor cast a glance towards his daughter and gave a short, low order to the people around him. Most of them departed, leaving behind only two advisors and Kim with the Emperor.

As the doors slid shut behind the others, Inin Takita IV beckoned for his daughter to come forth and she did, bowing in full accordance with customs and then sitting on a small, round cushion right in front of the dais.

"You cause your father, your Emperor, much grief", observed the one advisor coolly. Kim knew him well, he was a relative, an uncle, by the name Ashim and she was almost certain that it was his poison tongue that had destroyed Tagreen.

"He causes me grief, uncle," Kim answered, meeting his dark brown eyes with her own flaring feline emeralds.

"Hush now, Kitten," said the other advisor, making Kim bristle at the word 'kitten'. He was an elderly man by the name of William and he was one of those who had retained his non-Japanese name even if assuming Japanese style names had been considered a wise career move in later years. He had always been kind to Kim, but in a degrading fashion giving her the feeling that he didn't really consider her a sentient being. "You speak out of place, but I am sure it is the medicine that still clouds your brain. I am sure the Emperor will forgive your harsh words, would you only stop these useless gestures."

"This day was to be a joyous day," remarked Ashim. "Your father has great news for you, and yet you dishonour him by..." he searched for the words. "By running off like some convict, escaping the just grasp of the penitentiary."

"My father," observed Kim in an icy tone, "dishonours me by having a poisonous uncle and a senile old man speak his mind to me instead of addressing me himself."

"Kitten, you are quite rude," William said in an offended voice.

"I am neither kitten nor any more rude than all three men in this room," Kim said quietly. "Father, speak your mind to me. Tell me why my desires and wishes are against your godlike will and allow me to leave so that you may enjoy your gagaku again. Don't let these men speak your mind; I should suspect that you can do so yourself."

Inin Takita had been silent during the exchange, but now he lifted a hand in a small gesture, effectively stopping the advisors from answering to Kim's words. He gazed at his daughter, his wrinkled face unreadable and unperturbed.

"You know full well, why your act is frowned upon, daughter," he finally said in a tired voice.

"Yeah, I do. You have spent fortunes teaching me, educating me, developing my character, personality and indeed my spirit, and now you are regretting the experiment because the kitten has matured into a wilful woman, refusing to follow your every whim."

"You are a princess, and an attractive one," the Emperor growled. "And as such, your mind should be honed and your skills great, so that you can support your husband in whatever ways he sees fit. These are the obligations in your rank, daughter."

"I can see why I should play musical instruments and know how to wear a proper kimono without tripping in the heeled sandals, making a fool of myself," Kim answered back. "It makes me both pretty to look at and entertaining to boot. But what's the point in my martial arts skills, my licenses to a dozen different vehicles and my general education in history, culture and literature, if all I have to do is avoid embarrassing my coming husband?"

"You are a princess," Ashim remarked, "great skill and knowledge are expected of you."

"Oh shut up," Kim spat. "Father, all I ask is the freedom that so many others have. And anyway, who would want me as a spouse anyway? I..." she hesitated. "I cannot bear them children, I cannot grant them their desired heirs with imperial blood in their veins. You know that."

"You have asked me this before, daughter," Inin Takita said, looking intently at the feline woman in front of him. "And I have little new to add to accommodate the unfortunate ideas your former teacher put into you. I do, however, have one new thing to say. Regarding your infertility, your problems have been solved."

Kim had expected this to be just another tedious conversation, ending with either one or both of the advisors telling her off as if she was ten years old, followed by her accusing her father of a lot of things he had done and a few he probably had not. But this piece of news silenced her utterly and she looked at the Emperor with a mixture of disbelief and hope in her suddenly slightly stinging eyes.

Perhaps there still was hope? A child of her own? She had no desire for children just now, but the thought that she could never conceive, never hold her own flesh and blood in her arms, had always tormented her. At least most people had a choice. Most humans, anyway.

"Oh, that made you hold your tongue, kitten?" mocked William in an anything but decent tone. "Perhaps you may yet learn your place and ways. Now if I may -"

"You may not," interrupted the Emperor. "Leave us, both of you." He noted their hesitation and gave an icy stare into the room, not at anybody particular. "Now!" he barked.

Ashim and William were close advisors, even friends, but they were also so much into the Codes that they did not press the Emperor's patience any further. They both got up, bowed deeply to him and then a little less to Kim, and then they quietly left through a slide door behind the dais. Kim knew that contrary to common misconceptions, they would not be stopping just outside the thin paper door to eavesdrop. That would be unthinkable within the imperial palace.

So instead of fearing the ears of the advisors, she tried to make herself relax. A few discrete deep breaths and a silent prayer to an ancestor whom she didn't really believe was listening and then she met her father's deep eyes.

"William is a warm man," breathed the Emperor. "But young Ashim still has the recklessness of youth. I remember that feeling, daughter. Recklessness. It may come as a surprise that I had it too, almost as much as you do. Ashim thinks it is the sheerar side of you, but I recognise myself in your spirits. That craving, that yearning, I had it all when I was your age."

Kim was quiet. This was an unusual side of her father, who rarely spoke to her in any personal tone. She could barely remember being alone with him before and even if she did feel for remarking that Ashim was not young - he was forty six - she kept her mouth shut.

"Yes, I can tell. You are wondering why I am not merely appointing your punishment and then getting rid of you, as I have done the last several times you have left the palace without neither escort nor permission." He actually smiled a warm smile at her. "Is that not so, daughter? You expected to be taken down for renewed conditioning, isolation, meditation or something other of the sort, I have usually decided upon when you have acted against me."

She suppressed a shiver. Reconditioning was a very nice word for a week in the hospital wing, strapped down and regularly electrocuted until she could bear it no more and begged for mercy, promising to go back, wear the proper garments and speak in the proper tone. Oh it worked, but only for so long before her eyes were drawn towards the outer walls again. And isolation or meditation, four or more weeks in a small room 'to contemplate the codes', having only the written codes and a diet of cold rice, vitamin pills and water to sustain her, attended by servants who did not speak to her under pain of death. At least, so she believed they were, as none had ever broken that order.

She was certain that these methods, very reminiscent of what others would call brainwashing, were invented especially for her by 'young' Ashim.

"Today is, as Ashim said, a joyous day," the Emperor continued after a brief pause. "And I will not have it spoiled by sending you into treatment. Let's see if the good news will not suffice to solve the problem, hmmm?"

"Yes, father." Kim's voice was far more humble than she had intended it to be. But the chances, the prospects... It seemed that Ashim was not entirely satisfied with whatever the old man was implying and that, in itself, made it worthwhile to listen to.

"I have decided to have you marry Count Matsudaira Nobunaga!"

Kim just stared at him.

"Count Matsudaira is an old man," the Emperor continued unabashed. "He has two wives and several concubines and all the heirs he is likely to need; so your little problem won't matter."

Kim still just stared at him, her face expressionless.

"I have arranged that you will become his third wife. He is fond of beauty and he is a good personal friend of mine. He will become a good husband for you, I am sure."

Through a red haze, Kim heard somebody scream. For a moment, she understood neither who was screaming nor why the world was spinning. Perhaps it was a side effect of the drug she had been given earlier on. Other than a slight headache, she had never had any bad side effects before.

Then she realised that it was her own voice, tearing from her throat in a scream so much more feline than human.

And it was her own claws that were tearing through silk, cotton and skin, spilling the blood of the Emperor, Inin Takita IV, her father!

Hands.

Guards' hands.

Far less gentle than when they had prevented her dazed form from hitting the ground in an alley near a lime green car. Holding her down, restraining her.

Voices, calling for help.

Men, all over. More hands.

A sting. Wait, was that a syringe?

No!

No! No! No! No! No! No! No!

Nothing...

o o o

Kim was back in her imperial bed, the one with the silk, the cavernous surroundings and the smiling and yet uncaring servants. Beauties, every last one of them, and so totally engulfed into The Way and The Code that the mere concept of an individual thought, much less objecting to any given order, was unfathomable to them.

"Your highness?"

Allindra was different. Her words were the same as most of them, but her tone, her bearing and, more importantly, her eyes, gave her away.

"Your highness? Can you hear me?"

Kim could hear her very well, but she refused to answer. As long as her eyes were closed, she could pretend to be dreaming. Pretend that that was all it was - a dream. A filthy, ridiculous and utterly unrealistic dream!

Allindra was as close as Kim came to having a friend inside palace walls. She had been trained, educated and groomed by so many, and some she had grown to like, but all in all, people came and went.

There was Masako. She had been a teacher for Kim. Several years of literature, poetry, calligraphy and lots of girl talk. Masako had defied the Emperor's orders and told Kim things about the world outside the palace. Outside Honshu II.

As far as Kim knew, Masako was now stationed as a secretary at some desolate outpost on some mining planet far away. One does not go against the Emperor and get away with it. It was shortly after Masako's dismissal that Kim had her first taste of freedom.

Back then it had been easier. The guard did not question her authority when she demanded that the gates be opened for her. Nor did they try to stop her, even as she went into the teeming city, wearing the garments of commoners.

But when the Emperor found out, orders had been issued and many skilled men had searched for her. They found her quite easily, but she did not follow them back to the palace freely. Perhaps if they had not used the batons on the young man with whom she had shared a few words when they found her. If they had not immediately treated him as if he had assaulted a member of the imperial family. They had talked about the river that flowed through the city and through the park in which they were found.

"Your highness, you should try to awaken," Allindra's voice insisted. "It is important that you do."

No way!

She never got as far as to know his name; she only knew that he could recite poetry and that he most likely would have scars for the rest of his life. She didn't know if he had been punished further than that, nor if he understood what he had done wrong - that the sheerar girl had in fact been the Emperor's daughter.

Perhaps if they had not reacted that way, she would not have caused what councillor Ashim referred to as 'a scene'.

Next time she had been shot with tranquilizer darts. No scene.

The third time they had started the treatments, as if her craving for freedom was a symptom of some disease, something that could be treated with medicine and electricity. Ashim's idea, no doubt.

"Your highness," Allindras' voice sounded close. "You must wake up now. I know that you are awake, I can hear it."

Oh crap! She should have known that Allindra was not as easily fooled. Close to a friend, also because she was no fool and understood to play by the rules as far as it was necessary.

Kim opened her weary eyes and scanned the room moodily.

"Your highness," Allindra sighed. "I understand that you have been told happy news."

"Happy..." Kim muttered. "If you consider a convenient marriage to some old fart a happy development, I guess."

"You have caused your father -"

"Grief, yah, I know, Kim broke in. "And a few bruises as well, I suppose. I consider myself lucky that I didn't wake up in straps, electrodes at the ready. Was Ashim preoccupied when it happened?"

"Counsellor Ashim has not even suggested any, hmmm, treatments," Allindra assured, quietly helping her sit so that she could drink some water from a glass offered by the maid. "And what I was trying to say was that you have caused your father injury this time. He is with the doctors now."

"Good."

"Your highness should consider what is best in the current circumstances," the maid admonished. "Perhaps the Emperor has just not made up his mind yet, being with his surgeons still. Treatments or meditation can still be commanded, as can other things."

"Oh, but nothing that would damage my beautiful hide," Kim croaked. "Count Matsu-something-or-other is fond of beauty."

"Your highness..." Allindra whispered.

Kim gave in. She turned and threw herself into the only pair of arms within palace grounds that would welcome her and soothe her for no other purpose than to be there for her.

As she wept uncontrollably, she kept wondering if they weren't really the only such arms on the entire planet?

o o o

Meanwhile, almost the same time, but still another place - approximately.

Tegan considered herself a very patient person. She had waited for the Doctor to clear out the mess and, more importantly, the error in the system.

She had had seven cups of tea, several biscuits and, of all things, a cucumber sandwich. She had also read through several chapters of the book she was currently reading, only occasionally distracted in this by the recurring loss of light, orientation and stability of the TARDIS.

Now she had been violently thrown off her perch on the chair and sat on the floor, her bum sorer than she cared to admit and her eighth cup of tea spilled over the book, some of her clothes and parts of the floor.

She just sat there, patiently waiting, until the lights came back on. Then she looked at the Doctor with exasperation.

"How much longer before this crate stops behaving as if you were DUI?"

"DUI?" asked the Doctor, popping his head up over the console; now more in pieces than ever before. "What's that?"

"It's an abbreviation," Tegan explained, more than a little surprised that he actually listened. Normally she would count herself lucky if he showed any sign of having heard her, much less noticed her words. "Driving Under Influence, drunk driving, if you must."

"I'll have you know that I do not succumb to the abuse of alcoholic beverages," the Doctor commented in a voice strained from pulling at something below her line of sight.

"Still, the TARDIS is behaving a bit weird."

"Off course, the poor thing has been thrown of balance. A spot of trouble with the influx booster stabilizers."

"I see," Tegan muttered, biting her lower lip.

"You do?" The Doctor's head popped up over the edge again as he gazed at her, surprise evident in his face.

"No!"

"Oh." He disappeared again, obviously tugging at something.

"Have you tried kicking it?"

"Hmmm?"

"Kicking it," she said again. "Have you tried that?"

"Yes, it didn't work."

"Oh. Well, you could try it again…"

"We need vulcanized beta-cord," he explained patiently. "And before we get that, I cannot make the poor thing stop jumping a bit. She's not quite stable, you see. It has to do with-"

"So, where do we get this vulcanized beta-cord?"

"You know, I have absolutely no idea!"

Tegan wondered how it was that she sometimes liked and even admired the Doctor; when, at other times, she had this desperate urge to just kick him.

Like now.

"I'll make a few adjustments here and see if that brings us somewhere useful." He finally came all the way out from under the console and started to punch in numbers at it, excitedly watching as the central column continued to raise and fall in a steady rhythm, indicating that they were travelling.

Tegan knew better than to ask precisely where the Doctor and his craft were taking them this time.

o o o

_To be continued…_


	3. No Room to Swing a Cat Part 3

**No Room to Swing a Cat**

_The inevitable is approaching, but is it impossible to stop it? What, with the Doctor and Tegan preparing to make a stop for spare parts at the Palace, perhaps so!_

_Please be patient with this - there is more Doctor in this part and soon… Soon… (More nervous grin...)_

Part 3

Kim had recuperated. One thing the maids at the imperial palace were good at was hiding signs of tears on a face. The tabby hair had been made into a complex hairdo with a few ornaments, the face had been shined up to look her best and the wardrobe changed into something, as Allindra so bluntly had put it, a little more ladylike than those dastardly grey kimonos she usually insisted on wearing.

If Kim's appearance was impeccable, her insides were still in chaos.

How could he? First tempt her with hope of further freedom, suggesting that he actually understood, only to strike when she least expected it.

She caught herself hoping, childishly, that she had caused him sufficient injury to give him a good scar. Preferably in the face, so that he would have to wear the scar in public, as a constant reminder of his daughter.

That would be appropriate.

Kim sat in one of the gardens, in the Lily Garden, strumming her shamisen without producing a specific tune. The quiet hum of the strings soothed her, much like Allindra's hugs of comfort had done hours before.

After she had cried out every tear she had, she had gotten to her feet and asked for her other maidens to help her look her best. When her father decided how to treat the gross misconduct she had performed, she wanted to look her best, not defeated.

"Kitten?"

Kim started. Her acute senses, inherited from her sheerar mother and honed to perfection during intense training had failed to penetrate into the deep caverns inside of her where she had been contemplating her future.

She hated when somebody surprised her; she was proud of her keen senses and her feline heritance.

And it did little to calm her when she turned and found counsellor William standing there, his immaculate kimono reflecting the last rays of the sun and his eyes twinkling like some old man in a chocolate commercial.

Kim loved her feline ancestry, but sometimes it was less practical. Now she almost bristled at the sight of the loathsome old man, and she could not, given the state of her mind, prevent the tip of her tail from twitching angrily.

And yet she rose in one fluid motion, putting down the instrument and folding her arms into the sleeves of her kimono, bowing to the advisor.

"Counsellor William, you honour me with your presence," she said in a voice that could have been produced by a machine as it was quite devoid of emotion or intonation.

"Kitten, I have been sent -"

"That would be Princess Kimoto-sama," Kim interrupted in the same dangerously neutral voice, meeting the old man's eyes in a determined stare.

"Your highness, Princess, as you wish," William conceded with contained anger. "Your father has sent me to declare his orders for the preparations."

Her every fibre yelled at her to ask, but her face revealed nothing. Her tail still twitched in small, almost convulsing movements, but fortunately the older man did not seem to notice. As she did not say anything, he went on:

"The wedding between you and Count Matsudaira Nobunaga is to take place at the beginning of the Autumn Season. The celebrations will be in accordance with your rank and the wishes of the Count." He smiled at her, but she had seen hungry alligators with more warmth in their baring of teeth. "After the wedding, you will be moving from the imperial palace to live with Count Matsudaira Nobunaga at his island estate off the coast of Nagiya."

"He lives on an island?" Kim asked, fighting to keep her voice neutral. The islands off of Nagiya were secluded and had been virtually inaccessible by any means short of small planes or helicopters. It would be the perfect place to hinder any further escape. She would truly be lost, locked up with an old man and his desires, surrounded by unfamiliar but very bushido obedient people on all sides.

"The Matsudaira estate is quite famous. Built in the Classic Style of the Old World, the Edo Period of Japan," William explained, sounding as if he shared in the pride of the place. "The Matsudaira family is very loyal to the Codes, and you will discover that life there will differ very little from life at the imperial palace."

It was as she had feared.

"The wedding will be in a little less than two months' time. Before then, it is the Emperor's will that you should receive training and conditioning so as to be ready to become the wife of a nobleman of high esteem."

"Conditioning?" Kim was unable to stay neutral. She stared at William, trying to read his fake uncle-like face, but to no avail. The man was not as warm as he tried to look, but he hid his true emotions well.

"You will not be hospitalized," the advisor explained in a soothing voice. "You will receive treatments at regular intervals, as well as proper training in the traditions of the house of Matsudaira and their history. You will also be trained to understand what he appreciates in a wife. And," he added almost viciously, "in what he prefers not to find in a wife."

Kim understood.

Once she was tucked away at the Matsudaira castle, she would either submit or be... forced... There would be no escape.

"Until the wedding, there are a few, erh, conditions that will have to be met, I'm afraid," William continued and gestured towards the door. Four guards in the imperial uniform came into the garden, all of them were looking stern and yet with that slightly insecure face that Kim knew so well: The one a guard would wear when he knew that in order to obey one member of the imperial family, he had to go against the will of another.

"You will be confined to the northern parts of the palace at all times, lest you are taken to the hospital wing for treatments or the mandatory health check or summoned to the Emperor's quarters."

This was expected.

"And you are to wear this at all times," William continued, taking from his pocket a bracelet. It looked like a wristwatch, a sturdy model, and Kim immediately knew from her intelligence training what it was. This type of bracelet was more efficient than any chain or handcuff. It was radio monitored and automatic and it would be programmed to know her perimeters.

If she were to cross the invisible boundaries of her incarceration, it would alert the guard and at the same time it would inject her with, she guessed, a tranquilizer. These bracelets had been used for prisoners for decades, and some of them were, if the prisoner was considered especially dangerous, mounted not with a tranquilizer but with a lethal poison.

"Why don't you put a leash on me while you're at it?" she spat angrily, ignoring the guards, who discretely approached.

"Please, kitten -"

"If you call me that once more, I'll report it both to the Emperor and to my fiancé, the honourable Count Matsudaira Nobunaga. I doubt that either of them will appreciate such words used when addressing a princess who has come of age!"

"As you wish your highness." William bowed in acceptance of her order, but his eyes glinted in a fashion betraying his true self to her.

"And no, there will be no scene either," Kim spat, her tail now flailing freely. "I don't know if you had been looking forward to having me held tight, screaming and kicking while your dirty hands fondled all over me in search of a wrist to put that thing upon, but it will not be so. Hand it over."

William handed her the bracelet without another word and she put it on, tightening it under his scrutiny and feeling more than hearing the little lock click.

"I am secured now, Master William. You may leave."

The guards had already retreated, and with a bow, only just meeting requirements, William also left the garden.

Kim sat down again, righted herself and picked up the shamisen with trembling hands. The bracelet was not heavy by any means, but it nonetheless weighed down her hand, and she found that she was unable to even try to strum the instrument.

She was not locked up, in stead she wore her prison in the shape of a bracelet, just as much as she soon would wear it in the shape of a wedding band and the name Matsudaira.

Very quietly she put down the delicate shamisen and just sat there, staring into nothingness.

Waiting.

o o o

Meanwhile, rapidly approaching the present time.

With some satisfaction, Tegan watched as the central column finally came to a halt. There had been a few jumps, even a single serious one where she lost another teacup and received a few bruises, but at least the Doctor seemed satisfied that they were on the right track now.

With an almost imperceptible tremor, the TARDIS seemed to have arrived. The lights remained steady and nothing was lurching. Tegan liked this very much.

"So, where are we?" she inquired as she got up from the chair again.

"Inside…" the Doctor mumbled from his perch in front of the console.

"Yes, but where is the TARDIS?"

"Inside, like I said!" The Doctor straightened up and beamed at her. "It would appear that we have arrived inside a building. In a room of some sort. I knew the old girl would find us some place civilized, somewhere likely to produce the parts that we need. Now it is just a matter of finding and recovering the cables and perhaps a few other spare parts while we're at it."

"And you expect that this will be easy?" Tegan asked, reaching for her coat.

"Who can tell? But yes, I do not foresee any major trouble," he smiled back and pulled at the door lever. "Oh, don't get up, Tegan. I'll only be gone for a few moments."

"But I thought-"

"I'll be back before you know it!"

With that he was out the doors. Tegan scowled after him, briefly resisting an urge to stomp her feet in anger. Then she though again and decided to stomp.

Not that it helped any, not really.

o o o

_To be continued…_


	4. No Room to Swing a Cat Part 4

**No Room to Swing a Cat**

_Kim has not accepted her fate, but there seems very little to be done by now. That is, until a strange noise in the night disturbs her sleep and her feline curiosity is awakened along with her sense of adventure…_

_Author's note: If you are still with me: Here he comes! Thank you for your patience. Now this should turn into a decent Doctor Who story. And just you wait until Tegan starts playing her part too…_

Part four

The two weeks since the announcement of her 'engagement' had done little to lighten Kim's mood. In fact, she learned that it would be inappropriate for her to bring her own maids, so she would loose the company of Allindra as well.

She had received a letter from her fiancé, who had expressed his wishes for their marriage and his understanding of her inability to bear him any children. The letter had not contained any words of endearment or suggestions that she could, in time, come to like the house of Matsudaira.

It was almost as if it was a business treaty. But then, so it probably was. She knew very little of her father's relations to Matsudaira Nobunaga, but she was sure that the Emperor gained more from this marriage than just getting rid of an annoying problem.

And there were the treatments.

She was repeatedly taken to the hospital wing, strapped to a table and forced to listen to long tirades about the Code and the Bushido, receiving various drugs that made her dizzy and electric shocks to 'enhance her memory and help her remember better' as it was put.

She had read a bit about psychology and psychiatry and she had absolutely no idea how this ridiculous 'treatment' could be perceived as anything but brainwashing.

She suspected Ashim of having invented it for her alone, though she had no idea what reasons he had for hating her enough to do this to her. Truth be told, it was probably really more of a punishment than anything else.

At least she had been told that the treatments would end after the first month. And they were less regular than they had been at earlier times. But they were nauseating and extremely scary all the same, even if she tried to maintain at attitude of indifference. She always ended up screaming and saying whatever they wanted her to. And after a while of doing so, they usually stopped and had her wheeled back to her own quarters in a wheelchair or on a gurney.

She always slept after such a treatment.

The last had been this day, fairly early, and she had fallen asleep as soon as she had been tucked into her bed by a frowning but quiet Allindra. Now it was well past midnight and she was suddenly wide awake.

Something had disturbed her sleep. Not a difficult thing to do, as she was plagued by dreams and visions after visits to the hospital wing, but usually nothing would disturb the sleep of a princess.

She sat up in her bed, the tip of her tail twitching and her whiskers standing out from her face. She bristled instinctively as she scanned the room for anything out of the ordinary.

There it was again. A faint sound, strange and grinding, like some great mechanical beast fighting to draw air into asthmatic lungs. No, this was a silly notion... And yet, it seemed, rather precise.

Quietly she got out of bed and walked to the door on bare feet; just the way she really preferred.

The door opened easily and quietly on well oiled hinges. There were no guards outside, but with the bracelet it was hardly necessary. Disregarding the times where an escort had taken her to the hospital wing, she had been able to order her part of the palace free of regular guards - only a few passed from time to time, making sure that everything was all right.

Kim knew that her father would have a fit if he saw her walking the corridors at night, wearing but a light grey tunic allowing for her arms and legs - and tail - to move freely, but it gave her a freedom of movement that she liked a lot. Trying not to think too much about how the count would prefer her to look and act, she slipped down the corridor and went into one of the halls, trying to discern the origin of the sound.

But the sound had stopped now. She listened in the semi-darkness, her whiskers, her ears and her every sense of perception open and alert. She could just summon the guards or a servant, but she preferred to solve this little mystery by herself.

This way she would not look foolish when it turned out to be a matter for the plumber!

Perhaps she had imagined it? Perhaps it was really just something in the ventilation system, something that really was not her problem.

No, there definitely was something different in here! She bristled and curled down, following her feline instincts and trying to penetrate the walls themselves. There was something...

Kim continued down a corridor, turned left, stopped in front of a small door and literally sniffed it. It lead to a storage room, possibly the one where her bed sheets were stored or one where some of the household utensils needed to maintain the palace wing were kept.

The door opened easily and she peeked inside, sensing that whatever she had heard, this was where she would find it.

The room was bigger than she had expected and it was clearly a storage room. There were several rows of shelves, packed with boxes and crates and whatever was stored here, it was not a regularly used room; even here, inside the imperial palace, she could find dust.

She slid the door closed behind her and ventured further into the room, imagining to have put on her 'stalking hat' as she thought to herself.

There were seven rows of shelves, and the wall was lined with big crates and closets. The big crates fascinated her as she tried to imagine what was in them. One, as she looked closer, seemed to hold a closet, made from expensive woods and lacquer and currently stored here until it would be used again. Another held a small statue, made from a dark green stone and packed in those little flamingo pellets that were to protect it - and which poured all over the place when Kim tried to look inside the crate.

The next was a peculiar one, a dusty blue box with sides made from wood squares and a few pieces of frosted glass, and when she tried to push open the doors, they didn't budge.

It took almost an entire second before Kim realised that it was no ordinary box; then she realised what was different about it: It was not as cold to the touch as the others and moreover, it was humming quietly.

She removed her hand with delicate slowness and took another survey of the box. It looked a bit like a phone booth, what with the window squares in the side; only she now discovered the faded letters atop it: "Police Box". That was odd, what would a police box, whatever a police box was, be doing in a storage room in the south-eastern wing of the palace?

What was it about this box that made such an impression on her? By rights, it should make her skin crawl and her every instinct warned her about potential attempts, terrorist attacks and the likes; for all she knew, it could be humming because it contained an explosive device. And yet, some even deeper instincts made her less uneasy. Somehow this box, whatever it was, was not dangerous. Not really.

She tried to press the door to the box again, to no avail. Then she decided, with a mixture of anger, curiosity and plain stubbornness to force the thing opened. There should, at least in this part of the palace, be nothing that she was not allowed access to.

Kim tried to pry the doors, first with her bare hands, then with claws and finally even with the small dagger she wore as a ceremonial and yet quite sharp weapon. But none of it worked as even the dagger's tip could find no point of entrance between the closed doors.

Her continued attempts at prying the door with the dagger made it slip, and with a small cry of anger she jumped back, sheathing the dagger and wiping a few drops of blood from her palm with the hem of her sleeve.

Immediately after this, with a determination formed by the box's continued denial of access, she took two steps backward and kicked at it, right where the lock by rights should be.

When she later contemplated that night in the store room, she remained amazed that her howls of pain never summoned any guards.

The door, though wooden, weather-beaten and seemingly frail, did not budge at all. Instead she fell over and sat there, nursing her foot and trying to subdue her own whimpers of pain.

Okay, so that didn't work.

Carefully she got up, only to discover her own frailty. As she put weight upon her foot, she only just avoided crying out in pain. Something was wrong, and a searing pain shot up though her right leg.

This was truly adding injury to insult, she decided. She could choose to wail out, summoning guards, maids and eventually get medical help for her foot, but this would only add to the disgrace. The annoying fact remained that she had injured herself in a feeble attempt to kick open a stupid box, most likely a theatrical prop left behind. Perhaps the doors simply could not open and all this would make her look a fool.

Quietly she started limping away from the accursed thing. Returning at some other time would definitely prove the better part of valour. Muttering to herself, she reached the door to the corridors and placed a hand on it, noticing that she was trembling slightly from the pain in her foot.

"Excuse me."

Kim almost jumped, only just avoiding falling again. Instead she whirled around to see a man standing at the end of one of the rows of shelves. He was wearing a pale outfit with red stripes here and there, one that did not immediately fit any of the designated uniforms for palace staff, and he was smiling a kind smile at her, apparently having absolutely no idea who she was.

"Who are you?" Kim demanded, trying to remain dignified as well as avoiding putting weight onto her foot.

"I am the Doctor," he announced and made a sweeping bow before her. "And you?"

"I am..." Kim hesitated and looked at him again. "Kimoto Takita," she continued. "What is a doctor doing in the storage room at this hour?"

"Just having a little look around," he said and took a few steps closer, oblivious to her rank and name. "Are you hurt?"

"It's nothing," Kim blushed and looked down. Right now, the mere thought of admitting what had happened made her flush.

"Allow me," he said. "After all, I _am _the Doctor!"

"Yeah, but this is a storage room."

"Indeed," he observed, looking around as if only discovering this now. "It would seem that you are right. Would you prefer to go elsewhere?"

"Could you help me?" Kim asked, swallowing the last remnants of dignity. After all, he seemed to be a doctor and not one of those administering the treatments, and if he was here, he had to be cleared to be here. And her foot really did hurt!

"Certainly!" He beamed as if this was the best thing he had been asked today. Still smiling, he stepped to her side, offering his arm as if they were attending a formal dance. She took it and allowed him to support her weight so that she could avoid putting any weight onto her injured foot. Together they strolled out of the storage room and into the dimly lit corridor, where he followed her taut instructions until, after a few painful moments, they reached her room.

He helped her sit in a chair and knelt before her to help her get her sandal removed from the foot. Then, still without any comments, he quietly examined her foot with his cool, dry hands.

"It's not very serious," he finally said, gently letting her foot down until it rested on a small footstool. "You seem to have bruised it somehow, but a few days' rest and you should be as right as rain, I suspect."

"Thank you," Kim said, still staring at him and trying to penetrate his innocent appearance.

"You're welcome, Miss Takita." As he saw the frown on Kim's forehead, he hastily added: "Or would that be Takita-san? I am sorry, but I am a bit out of habit with Japanese custom. It is Japanese, isn't it?"

"You're not Imperial staff," Kim said. It was not a question, rather an observation. "You're an outsider, an intruder."

"Technically, I suppose that you are right."

"I should summon the guards and have you arrested!"

"But that would not be very polite, now would it?"

"No," she sighed. "No, it wouldn't. But it would be what was expected of me."

"And do you always do what is expected of you, Takita-san?" he asked, meeting her emerald eyes with his own blue penetrating gaze.

She was silent for a time as their eyes met, neither of them looking away and neither speaking. It was as if a link had formed and Kim was unwilling to break it. In those ageless eyes she suddenly saw that he, much like her, was not human. And she knew that this fact was amongst the few they shared.

And one more thing.

He did not feel at home where he officially belonged either!

"For being a creature of such an old house of codes and conduct, you are being rather rude!" the Doctor observed, finally averting his eyes.

"What do you mean?"

"Your peeking into my mind is not a very polite action to take, not judging by the best of possible rules," he said as he got up. "And you should know better; one day such a habit will get you into trouble, young lady."

Kim had inherited fragments of her mother's abilities and regularly used snippets of them at her leisure, envying those who could perform any real control, mind-speak or telekinesis. But this was the first time somebody had discovered what she was doing.

"I... I'm sorry," she mumbled. "I didn't mean to... erh..."

"Off course you did, but that's all right," he said with a smile as he sat down on the edge of the nearby bed. "Do you mind?"

"Not at all."

"Thank you. Now, you wouldn't happen to know your way around the storage rooms of this palace, would you?"

"Hmmm, no. Not really."

"Oh, you did seem quite at home in the one where we met."

"Yeah, well... I'm not supposed to peek into storage rooms. I am a princess, not a servant, you know."

This, at least, seemed to provoke a reaction from the strange doctor. He rose to his feet and stared down at her. "Not Princess Kimoto Takita?" he exclaimed.

"Well, kinda," she replied, trying to suppress a smile. "I would get up and bow formally to you, but as you know, I injured my foot. Now, I think you owe me an explanation. Who are you, not to recognise the only sheerar-human hybrid within several thousand miles and not even noticing the imperial coat of arms on my tunic? I would have imagined that every single Honshurian to enter the palace would figure out who I am within moments. For a doctor, you are sadly uninformed!"

He took the verbal beating in good spirits and quietly lowered himself onto the edge of the bed again. "You are the daughter of Emperor Inin Takita IV then?"

"You have the honour."

"Indeed," he muttered and looked around as if noticing the extravagant furniture and priceless paper tapestries for the first time. "Well, that does explain it..."

"You are a bit strange, you know that?"

"Oh, people have told me so before," he shrugged. "But I don't suppose that you could help me?"

"You are avoiding my questions," Kim observed quietly, insecure about what to make of this stranger.

"Quite. Would you know a bit about where in such a hopefully well-equipped palace I may find spare parts for an influx booster stabilizer?"

"Influx booster stabilizer?" Kim repeated dumbly.

"Precisely."

"No."

"Do you think you could possibly try to find out about it?" the Doctor continued looking hopefully at the young half-sheerar. "I really would appreciate it, you know. I am a tad stranded until I can fix it."

"Yeah… well, I guess I could have somebody look into it…" Kim pulled thoughtfully at a few whiskers as she tried to comprehend what was going on. "Yeah, I do know a few people around here who wouldn't ask too many questions as long as I am not directly… Hmmm…"

She was silent for a moment, contemplating the situation and weighing for and against, trying to decide what to make of it all. Then she finally met the Doctors eyes.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, her face level. "And why do you need a booster stability fluctuator or what ever it was?"

"The old girl just sort of short-circuited on me," the Doctor replied and looked almost a little embarrassed. "And what I need is spare parts for an influx booster stabilizer."

"It still sounds to me as if you are really not answering my questions," Kim said with a teasing smile, her white canines glinting in the dim light.

"I will have you know that I am answering precisely in accordance with the truth!" the Doctor huffed, frowning at her.

"The truth, maybe. But not all of it, I wager?"

"All of the truth," the Doctor warned, "is an awful lot of truth, young lady!"

"All right, all right. But if I help you, would you help me in return?"

"Most certainly, milady."

"I really should be howling for the guards by now, but you have arrived at just the right time for the both of us to benefit from your presence here," Kim explained. "That is, if you can help me."

"You are talking about your escape from the Palace and from Honshu II," the Doctor said in a hushed voice. "I should have guessed that, as always, the old girl does very little without purpose."

"Who is the old girl?"

"Oh, it's really just something I call her," the Doctor smiled. "It is my TARDIS!"

"Right…?"

"My craft," he explained patiently.

"And where, may I inquire, is that tardyce of yours?"

"TARDIS," the Doctor gently corrected her. "It's an abbreviation, it stands for Time And –"

"Never mind," Kim broke in. "But where is it? How did you get past the guards?"

"Ah, that would seem to be peculiar, now wouldn't it?"

"Yes."

"I arrived in that storage room. My TARDIS is not very hard to fit into a room."

"That blue box!" Kim exclaimed, staring at the Doctor. "It was your Tardeece? I sensed the vibrations. It seemed almost alive."

"Well, it does have certain –"

"But why that silly sign on it?" Kim broke in.

"Silly sign?" the Doctor repeated, taken a little aback.

"Police Box! It doesn't make much sense, now does it?"

"Now that's a long explanation. It came to be once and just sort of remained that way."

"It's not a very big craft, is it?"

"Ah, no. Not very big."

"But big enough to make room for two people?" Kim continued, taking her foot down from the footstool and eagerly leaning forwards to gaze levelly at the Doctor.

"Yes, I should say that would be possible," the Doctor replied hesitantly. "Look, I am really not sure this is a very good idea at all."

"If I could get you those parts, spares for that… that booster-thingy you talked about, would you help me to get away from the palace?"

"I really…"

"It's a good offer, you know," Kim murmured gently, a soft purr in her voice. "If you are apprehended inside palace grounds, a foreigner, an alien, an intruder, you should count yourself lucky if you survive the interrogations only to rot away for half a century in a cell."

"But…"

"And as I understand, that tardeece of yours is broken; you need the parts, right?"

"Why yes, but I really…"

"So I help you and you help me, I think it's a very reasonable deal."

"All right then," the Doctor sighed. After all, he had arrived here for a reason and it was just possible that it was in order to help this young girl escape. Her current fate was by far not a match with the one he knew about, which was to take part in a future where important things would happen. "You help me and I help you."

"It's a deal then!" She got up and extended a hand for a shake, but then she all but fell to the floor as she, forgetting in all the excitement, put most her weight on her injured foot and immediately lost balance as it crumbled underneath her. The Doctor jumped to his feet and captured her hand and then her weight before she could actually fall.

"You really should rest that foot, you know," he admonished Kim, sweeping her entirely off her feet and carrying her like a child to the bed, where he put her down. "And I should leave the bedroom of a Princess and retire to my craft, awaiting the morrow."

"I still think you owe me an explanation," Kim groaned, her foot hurting again.

"We can make a deal," He answered, drawing a light blanket over her. "But I don't owe you much besides that."

"Whatever you say, but how do I know you won't just be gone tomorrow?"

"You don't really, but I do need that spare part."

"Right then."

"Good night, Princess. Sleep tight."

"G'night then, I'll start looking for that part tomorrow."

"I'll be looking forward," he said with a smile. Then he was gone.

Kim stared at the door as it slid shut behind him. He was strange, downright weird, but she felt that he could be trusted. More than Ashim anyway, not that that in itself spoke volumes…

She curled up, resting her bad foot on a bundle of the blanket and tried to sleep while thoughts of escape fluttered through her tired mind.

Not for the first time.

o o o

_To be continued…_


	5. No Room to Swing a Cat Part 5

**No Room to Swing a Cat**

_Had Kim ever given up hope? Probably not. But her new ally requires something from her as well – and Tegan is getting bored!_

_Author's mutterings: Still feeling the butterfly-effect somewhere below, but starting to feel a little more at home with the writing and posting. Do say something – anything – in the review-section if only to help me get over my nerves. Or you could just read and enjoy…_

Part five

"Did you get it?"

The question seemed to catch the Doctor off guard as he came into the console room and he gazed at Tegan with that empty expression that she knew and loathed, meaning that he hardly really saw her; his mind preoccupied with something entirely different.

"The cable?" she insisted in a sharper voice. "Did you get it?"

"Erh, the cable, yes," said the Doctor hesitantly, and then he seemed to snap out of it. "Ah, the cable? You mean the beta-cords for the influx booster stabilizer? No, not quite yet."

"What were you doing then?"

"I will have you know that I was in fact helping a damsel in distress," he replied with a twinkle in his eyes. "A young lady who had injured her left foot. We came to an agreement and she promised to try and get me some vulcanized beta-cord, just the type we need for the old girl."

"When?"

"Pardon?"

"When would she get it for us?" Tegan inquired. "And what would she want in return? Gold? Advanced technology? Two dozen red roses?"

"Neither, I'm afraid," the Doctor cast a glance towards Tegan and looked a bit shy. "She just wants us, well, me, really, to help her out of here."

"Out of here? Where are we anyway?"

"Inside the imperial palace on Honshu II, it would seem," he said lightly.

"Honshu…" Tegan murmured, biting her lip. "It sounds familiar."

"It would, it is a planet, named after one of the Japanese islands in your time on Earth. Honshu. And it does have its origin and parts of its culture from Japan, even if not all the citizens here are Asian or even remotely human."

"So we're in the future then?"

"Yes, several thousand years, actually."

"But I thought that it was a crime, punishable by decapitation, to be found inside the palace of the Chrysanthemum Throne," Tegan said, remembering the old name for the Japanese Imperial throne from a romantic novel she read a few years back.

"Oh no, not here," the Doctor assured her. "No such thing, as a matter of fact. I think they would just plainly shoot us, perhaps after a few interrogations as to our reasons for intruding in the first place."

"I really wasn't concerned about how they might kill us," Tegan muttered defiantly.

"But I think we have this wing mostly to ourselves," the Doctor continued, unabashed. "The princess, a few maidens and servants and us. By the looks of the facilities right outside the TARDIS, I shouldn't say they are overrun by cleaning staff."

"Princess? Is it a Princess you have persuaded into getting us cord? And why would she need us to get her out of here?"

The Doctor explained about Kim's predicament in a few, precise sentences, including parts that Kim had not yet herself explained to him. He finished the explanation by adding: "So she really doesn't have much freedom here. I think that helping her out would be a reasonable thing to do."

"I can imagine," Tegan agreed. "Having to marry some old fart, just because of having another old fart for a father. With friends like that, who needs enemies? So, what do we do then, bring her in the TARDIS?"

"Ah, now that is the problem. She does get to play, uhm, a part in later events in history, and parts of her story is, or will become, known. According to this, she stole a small but advanced prototype spacecraft from her father and left Honshu II in that. Parts of that escape have almost made it into space legends in these regions and it could jeopardize a few things if she were to leave unnoticed in a TARDIS instead. Not to mention that she would not have removed the prototype from the palace as history otherwise would have it."

"But I thought you said that time is not fixed," Tegan offered.

"It isn't," the Doctor replied. "But I still think that this should be considered carefully. Anyway, we do have plenty of time to come up with a plan, as it will probably take her several days to actually get hold of properly vulcanized beta-cord."

"Don't say it…"

"Meanwhile," the Doctor smiled. "We wait here."

"I told you not to say it!"

o o o

Kim did not imagine that she could fall asleep after the long and peculiar chat with the Doctor, but the events of the last day and night had her in a deep, dreamless sleep for most of the rest of the night.

She did, however, wake up shortly after daybreak, with a start and the hint of a scream on her lips. The syringes… The pain…

She shook the dream off and sat up in her bed. Allindra was already at the foot of the bed, waiting and looking at her with the same, familiar and comforting smile as always.

"A bad dream, your highness?" she inquired softly as she got up.

"The usual," Kim confided. "Treatments my pretty well-tailed ass! The whole plot is about knocking me into submission, no matter what they call it."

"It will end before your marriage," Allindra said.

"Yeah, well…" Kim stumbled out of bed somewhat less graciously than she had intended as her weight on her sore foot made her fall sideways.

"Your highness!" Allindra exclaimed and came to her aid, seizing a hold of her arms, ignoring her feeble protests. "I should get a doctor, you are hurt! How did this happen?"

"I… I tried to kick at a solid wall, that's all…" Kim glanced at Allindra. "Let's not get any more doctors into this than need be, all right? It's just a bruise, I had just forgotten about it, that's all."

"Why did you kick at a wall?" Allindra asked, her dark eyes searching Kim's face for answers to another question that she dared not to ask.

"Practicing!" Kim said, her eyes narrowing. "I was practicing my martial arts and a kick came short. Or too long, as the case may be."

"Practicing. I see."

It was obvious to both of them that Allindra did not believe her, but the maid was too professional and had too much respect for Kim to say what she had really been thinking. It was unnecessary for any of them to point out that Kim truly had been suffering from bouts of mental illness. More as reaction to stress than anything else and usually following the so-called treatments. It had caused her delusions before, but it had always passed after a few days and perhaps a reduction in the sessions with Ashim's doctors.

"It will soon be over," Allindra whispered gently, starting to comb Kim's tabby hair. "And this time, it will not happen again. It will not take place at the castle."

"How do you know that?" Kim asked, just as quietly. "For all I know, Ashim may well have sent forth instructions to the count regarding how to tame this cat. Did you know that I am not to bring my own personal servants?"

"Yes, I know." Allindra was sitting behind Kim, working her hair, so she could not see the expression on the maid's face as she said this. She did have an idea… "But surely you don't think that the treatments will continue at the Matsudaira castle?"

"Who can tell…?"

"I am sorry, your highness."

The words, spoken with a quiet sincerity warmed Kim. It was nice to know that she still had a friend in this place. Actually, she realised with a start, she had two friends. Albeit the other one was quite a strange one at that, he had agreed to help her yesterday. Until now, she had almost forgotten… Those damned drugs…

"Could you arrange a meeting with one of the technicians today? Or an engineer or some such?" Kim asked after a few moments. "I need to consider my plans quite well and one of the few things that I can do, is to bring my personal instruments of music and my consoles. That I would wish to do, but I think I may require some special cables. The Matsudaira castle is old, and if this planet had not been colonised in the Space Age, I would have believed the place to be built during the Stone Age."

If Allindra was surprised by the sudden change of subject, she did not say anything. Kim discovered, much to her joy and fear, that she really loved the quiet, dignified woman like a mother or an older sister. The way they could silently share moments of beauty, of music or just of silent contemplation was a rare gift, and parting with her would be hard, but at least Allindra could return to a somewhat normal life after Kim's departure.

The maid finished helping Kim into her garments. Today she was not expected to do any official business, so she could be allowed to wear her hair in a simpler style and to don only the attire of less formal kind. This meant that she could keep her feet bare, just as she preferred, and that today could yet prove an acceptable day.

Allindra promised to request a technician, after which she departed the room, leaving Kim alone. If she had any more thoughts on the peculiar accident with the princess' foot, she kept it to herself.

o o o

Kim sat quietly for a while, contemplating her situation. She had a new ally, a peculiar man who called himself the Doctor and seemingly had arrived into the palace in a craft the shape and size of a telephone booth. However he had done this was less important than what would follow. He had agreed to help her escape this place in return for her supplying a special cable, and that was the important bit.

A special cable… Yes, but in what way special? If she was to have the imperial technicians supply it, she should probably have some better specifications than 'special cable'.

With a determined intake of breath and a stubborn grimace, she got to her feet and left her room to go to the storage room, wanting to ask about the cable and refusing to give in to her sore foot and limping.

Not that it didn't hurt, but she was too proud – or stupid – to allow this to show. Now it was daytime and she met other people in the corridors.

The code… Well, apparently it did work on her as well.

She found the storage room with little difficulty. Inside, nothing seemed to have been touched since yesterday, and in the far corner, that strange blue box was sitting as if to dare her ask how it had gotten there in the first place.

But how had it come to be here? It was, quite obviously, a craft. But surely it was far too small for any crew to travel in anything remotely like comfort – and how had it entered? Perhaps this odd Doctor had access to some sort of travel though other dimensions or some such…

o o o

"There's someone outside," Tegan said, glancing at the screen, watching the young Princess outside as she tentatively placed a hand on the seemingly frail boards of the TARDIS exterior.

"Oh, it's the Princess," the Doctor explained, getting up from a tangle of cables next to the console. "I say, you don't think she has already acquired the beta-cord? That would be awfully nice."

"She doesn't seem to be carrying any cable," Tegan noted. "And if she does, then what about that plan to get her out of here, in some prototype or whatever?"

"Well, we shall have to see about that," the Doctor admitted, taken a little aback. "But I am sure we'll think of something. Please do remember not to tell her about the prototype and all that, there's a good girl. I'll go and see what she wants."

Outside, Kim knocked the door of the box, still not quite certain about how to interpret the item and its presence here. But she was not looking a gift horse in the mouth, not the way things were going now.

After a few moments, the door was opened and the Doctor stepped out, effectively blocking her from looking into the box and quickly closing the door behind him.

"Good day to you, your highness," he said with a smile and a gesture almost but not entirely like a proper bow. "I trust that this morning finds you well? I see that your foot is better, but I really do think you should support it rather than ignore it."

"Hi," Kim said, halted by his flurry of words.

"You wouldn't by any chance have a cane? Or a walking stick?" the Doctor went on. "For support, I mean?"

"It's really no problem," Kim muttered. "Listen, I came to ask about that cable thing."

"Ah, the beta-cord."

"If you say so, yeah. The thing is, there are lots of cables, wires, things, and I would need to know what kind it is that you need."

"Ah, so you would," the Doctor smiled. "Now, what I require is a piece of beta-cord, say, seven point nine two six two five four metres?"

"Eight metres," Kim nodded, taking out a small notepad shaped like a cartoon image of a cheese to write on. "Got it. And what type?"

"It must be heavily vulcanized beta-cord with an influx capacity plug, multibeamed in a seventy-two pattern with extensions, naturally, and capable of sustaining a twenty-"

"Please!" Kim exclaimed. "I didn't get half of that. How many more specs are there on this thing? I thought it was just a cable!"

"If it were 'just' a cable," the Doctor huffed, "then I could just as well go to a local general store. If it were just another cable, then I wouldn't be intruding into an imperial palace, agreeing to the violation of at least six different laws in order to persuade you to get hold of it."

"Yeah, okay. Right then," Kim said, a little subdued by his intensity. "But what are those specs then? Couldn't you write them down? I think that would be easier."

"You only have that small pad there?" the Doctor asked, surveying the affronting item.

"That many specification? On a cable?"

"Yes."

"Oh… Well, then I guess there's nothing for it. You should come with me and speak to the tech-guy yourself. Don't you think that would be better?"

"Yes," the Doctor conceded.

"Well, there will be a technician at my quarters some time today, probably soon. You could come along and talk to him then. There's even a chance that he'd understand what you're saying about that beta-cord stuff. Better than I do, anyway."

"How true," the Doctor said. But the twinkle in his eyes made Kim bite back the fiery reply she was about to make.

"And we could have lunch while we wait," the Princess found herself suggesting. "If you don't mind a grand breakfast with amultitude of dishes, that is. They always bring me enough food to feed five individual suburbs. So I can easily invite a few extra people without warning the kitchens."

"Could that possibly include me?" a female voice broke in from the door of the box as a dark haired woman in a purple dress poked her head out, smiling sweetly at the Doctor and Kim. "I, for one, am starving!"

"Tegan!" The Doctor's voice was sharper, less pleasant, but not really angry. "I told you to stay inside."

"Not as such, you didn't," Tegan defended herself as she came all the way out of the box. "You did last night, but you didn't say anything now."

"You knew quite well what I meant," the Doctor harrumphed, but the traces of his anger were fading all the same.

"You would be welcome," Kim said hesitantly, gazing at the newcomer, wondering how the two of them managed a life in the confined space of the small box. And how the three of them would ever fit into it? Surely the engine and that influx thingy had to take up some of the room too?

"How kind!" It seemed as if she were more addressing the Doctor, telling him who won their little dispute, but Kim didn't mind. Company, any company, would be welcome.

"At least the staff of this section of the palace will probably assume that you have been let in through the tighter main gate security and thus not ask too many questions," Kim said as she stepped back, allowing her two guests some room. "But I hope you realise that it could be a little dangerous?"

"Dangerous? What, will they behead me or something?" Tegan asked with a half-smile.

"Well, not before the interrogations have concluded," Kim said gravely, but then she smiled. "No, probably not. But the guards of this place are a bit on their toes and security is rather tight. But as long as you stay in this wing and don't go too near the guards, you should be safe."

"I thought that you, being a Princess, could just order them not to do us any harm?" Tegan said and then, as a reaction to the frown from the Doctor, she added, "your highness."

"Erh, if you don't mind, could we be informal?" Kim asked, suddenly blushing slightly. Tegan found herself distracted as she noted that Kim's tail was lashing slightly – just like that of an agitated cat. "Please call me Kim, just like all my friends do. And no, if the imperial guards discover intruders here, they will act no matter what I say. But the guards are not allowed into my private quarters, only around the area. The system is supposed to be fool proof, but it would seem that you two have found a fool's way in."

"Mostly him," Tegan explained, thumbing towards the Doctor. "He found a way. Anyway, I'm Tegan."

Kim took the offered hand and smiled genuinely at Tegan. Then she extended her hand to the Doctor and said her name, inviting him to do likewise.

"I am the Doctor," the Doctor replied, pumping her hand shortly and then letting go.

"Doctor who?" Kim asked, falling into the same trap as so many before her.

"Precisely," the Doctor beamed. "And now, introductions taken care of, perhaps we should go to your quarters? I really think you should have that foot on something higher than the ground."

Kim looked askance at Tegan, who shrugged in a way suggesting that this was so very typically Doctor-behaviour. Somehow the gesture brought a smile to Kim's face and she gave up the quest for understanding this Doctor-fellow. For now.

"Well, you know the way, Doctor," she said, taking the lead. "It's a big room adjacent to my bedroom, right down here. And Tegan, don't worry about the common staff. They are not likely to alert any guards. There's an old mistrust between civilian staff and military guys in this place, and I have taken advantage off it before today."

"I'm glad to hear that," Tegan said, following as the Doctor and Kim left the storage room.

"You'll be even happier when you see the table of food," Kim assured her.

"Too right!" Tegan smiled.

Together the three of them went down the corridors, truly unnoticed and unhindered by the few servants they passed along the way.

o o o

_To be continued…_


	6. No Room to Swing a Cat Part 6

**No Room to Swing a Cat**

_Things are developing. Kim and Tegan seem to speak the same language, and not only due to the TARDIS – and the Doctor is relaxing into a firm belief that he will have his missing parts soon._

_But isn't it dangerous to relax?_

_Author's mutterings: Consider this an interlude before things turn hectic…_

Part six

It took only the briefest orders to a discreet servant to make sure there were plates and room for two guests at the breakfast table and without much hesitation, the three sat down at the table. Kim noted that she had long ago abandoned traditional Japanese cushions for real chairs when it came to eating in a relaxed manner and quietly, Tegan agreed with the attitude.

Kim had not overestimated the impression made by the table of food. The serving was indeed made to accommodate just about every taste and culinary desire that a human – or a feline – could have. Kim said it herself, thus saving Tegan the lame joke, as she observed that nobody had ever served her mice, neither raw nor cooked.

The dishes were roughly divided into two kinds; the Japanese and the more continental kinds, as Tegan saw it.

The Japanese breakfast was the classic style with various fish, vegetables and rice, and Tegan briefly hesitated when she saw how Kim poured a raw egg yolk over a bowl of rice and started to scoop up the mixture with glee. But then her attention was attracted by a plate with various smoked game and lamb, sitting challenging next to a basket with still warm bread and a plate of butter.

Soon after, her mouth full of delicious food, Tegan observed that the Doctor had endeavoured into the Japanese food and was showing off an extraordinary good control of the chopsticks. Kim also had a natural grip on them, but Tegan felt safer with good old knife and fork and was happy to discover that such utensils were also available.

"So, what is so bad about this place that makes you want to leave then?" Tegan asked between mouthfuls of food. "I mean, if this is a normal breakfast, it's pretty good."

"You want the true or the polite answer to that?" Kim asked, her emerald eyes revealing no sign of offence. "Your choice."

"Erh... Well, if you don't mind," Tegan said hesitantly as she munched on a slice of smoked lamb and tried to ignore the admonishing looks from the Doctor. "Well, the Doctor has told me that you are in for an arranged marriage to some old man."

"Count Matsudaira Nobunaga," Kim replied, balancing some vegetables on her chopstick and speaking in a light tone. "He has been a great man in Honshuan politics and his family is a very old and honoured one in our world."

"What's the problem then?"

"That my father is having me marry him because I cannot bear children and Matsudaira has both wives and concubines, both having produced lots of heirs," Kim explained, also ignoring the tense glances from the Doctor. Her tone was still a disinterested and calm one. "And he likes to own pretty things."

"Oh."

"Yeah, and it also solves my fathers problem about having me running about, trying to escape from my palace and my destiny. Highly improper, I think."

Tegan cast a sidelong glance at Kim and noted that she was not looking subdued at all. In fact, she was smiling. "You are taking it pretty well," she observed. "I'm not sure I could."

"Hmm, no. I am not taking it well, not at all in fact," Kim replied, still smiling, but Tegan noted that the tail was lashing gently again. "I have learned about the world only to be cut off from it, forever a prisoner on an island with a dirty old man. And I expect to be attempted conditioned into submission before the marriage is to take place. That, I think, would be a nasty fate for most anybody. But I have a chance now to escape, thanks to you two."

"Oh, don't mention it," Tegan said with an insecure smile. "I think it's the Doctor you'll have to thank."

"And I will be taking that cord in return for services rendered," the Doctor said with another little smile as he deftly tossed some piece of meat into the air and catching it again with his chopsticks before stuffing it into his grinning mouth.

"In other words, everybody stands to win," Kim said. "So why wouldn't I be happy?"

"No, why not. But still, this is great food." Something about the way, Tegan pointed this out, made it clear that it was better than the food she had on a daily basis.

"So," Kim said, trying to mimic the Doctors attempt with the chopsticks. "When the tech-guy comes, you can explain what it is that you need. Then he will most likely supply it and then you can fix that craft of yours, the, uhm, tahdeece. And within a few hours, maybe a few days, we are off from here, right?"

"Something like that," the Doctor murmured, looking slightly uncomfortable. "But we cannot leave before I have used the cord to repair the TARDIS. It may take a little time."

"When he says a little time, prepare for a month or more," Tegan warned Kim with a grin.

"A month?" Kim repeated dumbly, looking anything but pleased and suddenly making it obvious to the two guests that she really did have whiskers as they stood out from her face. "The wedding is in five weeks time," she continued nervously. "I have to be out of here by then!"

"And you shall be," the Doctor said calmly. "Don't worry."

"Easy for you to say," Kim muttered, trying to regain her dignity. "You won't be forced into a marriage like that."

"No, but if we are still here when that time comes, we could be in a spot of trouble as well," the Doctor pointed out. "So you see it is in everybody's best interest that our problems are solved before that time."

"I wouldn't worry one bit," Tegan informed Kim. "The Doctor always saves the day!"

"I really hope so," the feline said, regaining a smile and then turning to the Doctor. "So, what are you a doctor off anyway? Medicine? Science?"

"Ah, some of this, a little of that," the Doctor replied airily.

Before Kim could enquire further, there was a faint knock on the door. Even if most of the place was in a distinct Japanese style, the doors of Kim's quarters were not sliding doors.

"Yes?"

A woman in a grey uniform entered, carrying a small case and bowing deeply to the princess and immediately after for her guests.

"Good morning, your imperial highness," the woman said, her face kind but stern. "I am Mrs Connie Walken, the chief engineer of the palace, you have sent for me?"

"Yes, chief engineer Walken," Kim said, suddenly with an air of authority that added several years to her appearance. "I have some requirements for supplies in order to pack the electronics that I need to bring to the Matsudaira castle."

"Very well, your imperial highness," Mrs Walken said. "Please just let me know what to do."

"This," Kim said, indicating the man next to her, "is the Doctor. He is a specialist who has accepted to aid me in my packing. He will instruct you about the parts needed."

"Ah, yes," the Doctor said, immediately accepting his part. "Perhaps we could go next door and settle the matter while the imperial highness takes her breakfast with her friend? There is really no need to disturb them."

"With your permission," the chief engineer arched an inquisitive eyebrow at Kim.

"Granted," the sheerar said. "Please do. And when you're done, please have the Doctor return here."

"Very well, your imperial highness," Mrs Walken said again. Then she bowed and left the room, beckoning the Doctor to follow, which he did.

The door had barely closed when Kim seemed to deflate slightly. Then she looked at Tegan and burst out laughing.

"What?" Tegan asked, swallowing her food.

"Oh, I just love that over inflated imperialistic super-ego crap! Did you see that poor thing crawl along the floor boards?" Kim made a gesture as if wiping her eyes from mirth. "It really makes no sense at all. How the majority of the population can be so eager to accept this kind of high-and-mighty, I really have no idea. One would suspect they like it that way…"

"Guess so."

"Yeah. Beats me, though. But the Doctor was pretty apt at accepting his role as my advisor. Bark at somebody here and they'll jump and wag their tails!"

"Like I said, this place does have advantages," Tegan said, leaning back heavily into her chair. "Hell's teeth, I am so full. I could burst…"

"Doesn't he feed you? The Doctor?" Kim asked.

"Not really, if I want something, I'll have to cook for myself. He doesn't do that much."

"Cook?" Kim asked, also seeming to give up on eating any more. "Where? In your taah… Craft?"

"Oh, it's bigger on the inside than on the outside," Tegan admitted airily, trying not to look too smug. "There's plenty of room."

"I see," Kim said, obviously not realising that it was the actual truth.

"Really," Tegan grinned.

"Well, then it's just opposite of this palace then."

"How's that?"

"It's much more claustrophobic on the inside than on the outside!"

Tegan laughed at that and the two girls found each other communicating as if they were old friends. Soon Tegan was telling Kim about some of her more recent adventures with the Doctor, including the sad tale about how they had recently lost a friend named Adric.

Now they were three people travelling together in the TARDIS; the Doctor himself, Tegan and a woman named Nyssa, but the latter was currently staying on a planet named Valaron to take part in a scientific conference. Before Kim really came around to ask more about this, Tegan began to explain as best she could about the Doctor. Kim listened with fascination, only interrupting to admit that she had never heard of Gallifrey.

But the princess was intrigued to learn that Tegan was from Earth – and from the past, having travelled for some time with a Time Lord. The Doctor.

o o o

The two withdrew to an adjacent room where their talk continued as Kim now told her story while discrete servants cleared out the breakfast table.

"So you see," Kim finished. "If I hadn't had the good fortune to have Maryah as a teacher for almost four years, I would not have learned about the alternatives to this life. Perhaps I would have submitted more willingly to the will of the emperor, but I really doubt that. Maryah was a free-willed woman and she showed me much that she was not supposed to before the emperor discovered. And by then," she added with a feral grin, "it was too late!"

"What happened to Maryah?" Tegan asked.

"Oh, she was exiled," Kim sighed. "Directly punishing her would have been too embarrassing for all, and admitting that she had placed dangerous thought in my head. But she was sent to teach in one of the colonies. She writes from time to time, and even if the letters are monitored, I really think she has a good life there. She married about two years ago and last I heard she had become a mother."

"So the point was," Tegan said, popping another delicate chocolate flower into her mouth, "that you were supposed to be a well educated thing to be wed away by this father of yours then?"

"Something like that. But then I learned that those rules do not apply for the masses. For the people. And, well, I was jealous." Kim only just beat Tegan to the last of the delicious chocolates. "Gotcha! Well, but Maryah's bad education has made me an obstinate child. Very sad for the emperor. Very nasty, very improper."

"Too bad for him," Tegan said, watching as the last chocolate disappeared.

"Yeah, like I said-"

"Hello, ladies," the Doctor's arrival interrupted Kim as he entered, looking very satisfied.

"I know all about you now!" Kim said, gazing levelly at him.

"Oh you do, do you now?" the Doctor did not seem bothered. "That is a lot to know."

"Undoubtedly, milord gallifreyan."

If the Doctor took any offence from Kim knowing this, he didn't say. In stead he helped himself to one of the crisp rice biscuits on the table and beamed at the two of them. "She is quite a capable person, that imperial engineer, Mrs Walken. And I just think that she can provide the cord needed for the old girl."

"That would be the TARDIS?" Kim enquired, now finally having the word right.

"Precisely. She can have the cable ready within a few days and then, shortly after, the TARDIS should be ready for take-off again."

"In other words, everything is on route to a happy ending," Kim suggested, proffering the tray with the last biscuits.

"With a little luck, yes."

"Care for some entertainment, a game or some such while you wait?" Kim asked. "After all, this is an imperial palace and I can summon some of the artists who usually play the gagaku."

"Gaga what?" Tegan asked.

"Gagaku, it is an old Japanese term for music played for the court," the Doctor helpfully informed.

"Very good, Doctor," Kim smiled. "It is. Is speaking Japanese also one of your seemingly endless abilities?"

"Not really, no," the Doctor replied, looking smug. "But I was told by princess Okiko of Japan somewhere in the early sixteenth century."

"That was the princess who later became regnant empress?" Kim asked, impressed. "You have seen her? She is said to have been very beautiful!"

"She was a very nice person, as I recall," the Doctor conceded. "And she taught me much about Japanese tradition, including the gagaku."

"You've seen the world, huh?" Kim said, smiling. "One of the fringe benefits of being a Time Lord with his own TARDIS, I suspect."

"Something like that, yes."

"So, would you like to experience some contemporary gagaku?"

The Doctor seemed more interested than Tegan, but the princess seemed so delighted at the prospect of the traditional music that they both decided to join her in one of the small gardens after she had summoned the musicians.

o o o

Elsewhere in the huge palace, there was a soft knock on a door.

"Come", came the short reply.

A woman in a grey uniform entered, carrying a small case and bowing deeply to the man behind the desk. "Your Excellency wished to see me?"

"Yes, Mrs Walken," Chancellor Ashim said levelly, scrutinizing the woman before him. "I should very much like you to tell me everything you know about the two guests in the princess' wing!"

o o o

_To be continued…_


	7. No Room to Swing a Cat Part 7

**No Room to Swing a Cat**

_The Doctor and Tegan Jovanka are property of the BBC – you know the drill. Kimoto Takita and most everybody else are my creations!_

_The serenity of the palace wing tempts its occupants into relaxing and lowering their guard and Kim and Tegan behave as if they are old friends. But an imperial chancellor does not wait to see what may happen – he acts!_

_Author's mutterings: I hope you liked the pleasant scenes; they won't last much longer…_

_BTW: The shamisen is a traditional Japanese stringed instrument. It is small and long-necked and used to play some very beautiful tranquil music._

Part seven

Tegan had to admit that the serenity and beauty of it all was a little hard to ignore.

She sat with the Doctor on small cushions in a courtyard somewhere in Kim's palace-wing and listened as the feline sat before them both, softly strumming the shamisen with her fingers, producing quiet, almost sedate music. The princess had tried to sound nonchalant but it had been clear that she really would enjoy playing for her new found guests, and now Tegan was trying hard not to yawn or shift on her cushion, even if her feet were numb from sitting still.

The Doctor, as always, seemed quite comfortable with his position and the entertainment. His blue eyes were distant as he had seemingly lost himself entirely to the soft music. Perhaps he was remembering Okiko?

It suddenly occurred to Tegan that the music had stopped. Kim was still sitting there, quiet and almost statue-like, but the hands, which until now had been the only thing moving, were still.

"Bravo!" Tegan exclaimed, clapping her hands. "That was just beautiful!"

The Doctor started and Kim blinked and it dawned on Tegan that her clapping and words had disturbed something. Blushing, she stopped and looked around. "Erh, sorry," she muttered. "I didn't mean to…"

"In Japanese culture, one does not clap out loud," the Doctor explained.

"I actually appreciated it," Kim smiled, getting up from her cushion with only the slightest hint of a sore foot. "Nobody around here dares show any emotion, not even appreciation. It makes the place seem sterile, don't you think? Tegan, did you really like it?"

"Yeah, it was very beautiful!" the Australian insisted. "Very… quiet. But how do you avoid cutting off the circulation in your feet?" she continued, ungraciously tumbling sideways in an attempt at getting life into her numb feet.

"Sometimes I don't," Kim admitted. "But usually it is just a matter of practice. You'll get used to it. Or you would if you stayed here for long enough. Try to sit on them."

"Sit on them?" Tegan blurted, waving off the Doctor's hands as he tried to help her.

"Take a different position on the cushion and then make sure there is weight on your legs, that way it won't sting so much when your numbness fades. Trust me, been there, done that."

"She's right," the Doctor added. "Pressure, even just a little, can alleviate the pain you may otherwise experience."

"How about you?" Tegan grumped.

"How about me?" the Doctor enquired.

"Well, don't you get any numbness?"

"I have been practicing this," the Doctor smiled. "Not to mention that I have a double circulatory system, which helps a bit."

"Double circulatory system?" Kim repeated dumbly, putting the shamisen at a nearby bench. "What do you mean?"

"Ah, two hearts, as a matter of fact," the Doctor explained.

"Why indeed not," Kim muttered. "You know, for someone almost human looking, you are quite remarkable."

"Thank you," the Doctor beamed.

"Your imperial highness?" a female voice interrupted.

"Yes?"

Connie Walken entered, still carrying her omnipotent case and bowing to Kim.

"I merely wished to let you know that the cords, the plugs, the tubes, the fan and the chemicals will all be delivered to your quarters the day after tomorrow."

"Good, good," Kim said, looking a little surprised. "Erm, I thought it was only cable?"

"To begin with, it was," the engineer said, her face a mask of indifference. "But the Doctor explained to me what he needed and I assured him that we could supply it all."

"Ah, yes," the Doctor broke in. "The chief engineer was quite helpful. I am sure it will all meet our standards and be of the bestest of qualities!"

"What? Oh, yes, it surely will," Kim said, her face looking calm but the tip of her tail lashing quietly. "Two days, you say?"

"Yes, your imperial highness."

Kim stood there for a moment, gazing at the woman in a very thoughtful way, whiskers standing out, nose twitching ever so slightly, and her emerald eyes surveying every inch of the engineer.

"Good," she finally said. "You may leave us."

"Very well, your imperial highness," Mrs Walken said as she almost fled the courtyard in her haste, barely adhering to proper behaviour.

"What was that all about?" Tegan asked as Kim stared after the uniformed woman, tail now lashing more and head bent down as if leaning forward to study something.

"She was hiding something," Kim declared, picking up the shamisen and entering the building, obviously expecting the others to follow her. "It may be nothing; perhaps she was worried about something private, her husband or trouble at home. Maybe an unruly child. She has three of them after all."

"But you don't think so?" Tegan insisted, following into one of the dayrooms of the palace along with the Doctor.

"I don't know, Kim admitted, sitting down on a chair, leaning forward to massage her foot. "She seemed uncomfortable by something. Upset."

"Do you think somebody has been alerted to our presence here?" the Doctor asked.

"Not guards as such," Kim assured them. "They would be crawling all over the place immediately."

"Maybe we should retreat to the TARDIS?" the Doctor suggested quietly.

"No, no, no," Kim's voice seemed calmer and her tail finally relaxed again as she allowed herself to sink back into the cushions of the chair. "No, I am probably just overprotective, far too alert." She sighed. "Mrs. Walken has three children, one of whom, I happen to know, is a diabetic. The worry I smelled upon her was probably just a mother's worry for a sick child."

"Or she was scared because of the scrutiny you gave her," Tegan admonished her.

"What?"

"You gave her a looking-over that would have made most people upset," Tegan said defiantly. "Really, you treated her as if she was smelling badly or something."

"I did?"

"The way you stared at her, measuring her, smelling her," Tegan continued, now a little braver as Kim was obviously genuinely surprised. "Must be the cat in you or something, but I think it would give most people the creeps!"

"Was I behaving…?" Kim hesitated. "Rudely?"

"Not rudely, precisely," the Doctor cut in. "Just normal behaviour for a sheerar, that's all. But Tegan is right; it did seem to make the chief engineer uncomfortable."

"I didn't mean to upset her," Kim said in a deflated voice. "I really didn't think…"

"I don't suppose anybody has ever told you about the effect you have on some people," the Doctor said quietly.

"No… I always presume that they react that way because of my title," Kim muttered. "I've never met such reactions when I have been out of the palace."

"But that has been more or less on the run, right?" Tegan asked.

"Yeah, kinda."

"So you didn't have time to stop and give anybody a sniff?"

"No."

"Well, what the Doctor and I are trying to say," Tegan said, smiling in an attempt to make it clear for Kim that they were really only trying to help, "is that you were acting more like a cat and less like a human. I think that would scare some people."

"I just… I never thought of that," Kim said, almost in a whisper.

"I am sure it has gotten stronger recently," the Doctor said softly. "Your senses have improved, have they not?"

"Yeah, they have."

"And with them, the urge to use the feline side of your sensory system," he continued.

"I suppose…"

"Well, that explains it then," he said, sitting down on one of the other chairs, slapping his knees in a satisfied manner as if to defy the tense mood. "It's really just a side-effect of your adolescence and maturity. The psychic powers of the sheerar are manifesting as you become of age."

"Don't say you've met sheerar as well?" Tegan broke in.

"Well, pure sheerar as a matter of fact," the Doctor replied smugly. "On the planet of Zhirr. A while ago, relatively speaking."

"My mother was from Zhirr," Kim said, grasping onto the chance of changing the subject. "All of the sheerar races are from that planet. Most are clever enough to stay there."

"Is it so bad to go elsewhere?" Tegan asked.

"To end up as exotic slaves or concubines?" Kim snarled, and then smiled some again. "No, far from all sheerar do that, but imagine a human-shaped world, one where most species are roughly human shaped and approximately that size. Then imagine driving a car, working an elevator, going to the lavatory when roughly in the shape of a big cat…"

Tegan couldn't help but laugh at the prospect.

"Never mind sliding doors and tails," Kim continued, smiling herself. "Why do you think I do not have sliding doors in this part of the palace?"

"Yay!" Tegan exclaimed.

"Precisely! Sliding doors are, by all accounts, a menace to people like me or my mother's kin."

"I can imagine…" the Stewardess said with emphasis.

"Then don't imagine what it looked like when my mother tried to drive a car," Kim laughed too. "Not to mention having to go to the little kittens' room!"

Tegan laughed so hard at Kim's wide-eyed expression that she had to help herself to some fruit juice before she could speak again.

"It does seem somewhat awkward for sheerar to use human facilities," the Doctor observed, just as Tegan had managed to regain her dignity, almost ruining it again.

"You should have seen my mother on horse-back," Kim casually made as if holding the reins of a mount and Tegan lost it again.

"How did she manage at all?" the stewardess asked when she finally could speak again. "I mean, why does a being which basically resembles a big cat travel to a human dominated planet?"

"Well, you know what they say," Kim said calmly.

"Please don't say it…" Tegan begged, her eyes still wet from crying with laughter.

"Curiosity killed the cat!" the Doctor supplied.

Tegan tried to stifle another burst of laughter when Kim eyed her with the most incredulously overacted casualness she'd ever seen.

"What's the matter?" the Princess enquired. "Cat got your tongue?"

That was it. The three of them spent the next while making jokes about how big cats did – and did not – cope in a human world. At least the tension from before was all gone and Kim once again relaxed.

o o o

"I shall go and fetch it if you don't believe me!" the Doctor was looking stern, but a glint of mirth in his blue eyes betrayed him. "On the one condition that you do not take it or ever comment on how I got it!"

"Nothing would be further away from me," Kim said, smiling. "But get on with it, Doctor. Show it! Truth or dare, you know."

"Come on, Doc, it'll only be a few minutes. The TARDIS is just around the corner," Tegan added. "And meanwhile Kim and I can get some fresh supplies of those nasty deep fried thingies."

"Those nasty deep fried thingies," Kim admonished, "happen to be a local delicacy made from seaweed and herbs in a spicy batter. They are not nasty, in fact they are very healthy, if it wasn't for the greasy batter perhaps."

"Seaweed?" Tegan exclaimed while the Doctor, having abandoned all hope of escaping his promise, left the room. "You're kidding! Green stuff from the ocean floor?"

"Blue stuff, but otherwise you're right," Kim grinned. "And yeah, I know. Fish shit in ocean water. And that's not the only thing they do in it. Remember they have to make little fishes from time to time!"

"Rabbits!" Tegan muttered, attempting to look appalled but failing.

The mood between the three had lightened considerably after Kim had had her servants bring delicious snacks and little bottles of warm sake. This beverage, by many mistaken for a rice wine, had a spiced taste that was accentuated by the temperature, and Tegan had found that she rather liked it.

The fact that it was drunk from very small cups had just made her do like so many others before her, and she had consumed many cups of sake by now.

Kim had only had a few cups as she explained that her physiognomy reacted badly with any serious amount of alcohol. And yet even those few cups had brought colour to her cheek and a giggle to her voice. The Doctor had also enjoyed some sake, but nothing seemed to indicate any real reaction to the alcohol in his demeanour.

"My dear Miss Jovanka," the feline slurred, pretending to be more drunk than she actually was. "You are intoxicated beyond any decency. I shall have my servants chop off your head and place it somewhere nasty!"

"Decency? I thought you were the one trying to escape just that!"

"I am and I will," Kim grinned. Then she looked her new friend square in the eye. "Seriously, I'd like to challenge you."

"Hopefully not to a duel," Tegan said, rubbing her warm chin.

"No, but close enough. Are you familiar with the ancient game of mikado?"

"Mikado? Uhm…"

"All it takes is a steady hand, my dear," Kim announced gravely. "And that's why I shall be victorious and you shall be a looser!"

"Fat chance!"

The two gathered at another table, deep fried seaweed forgotten and started to play the millennium old game where thin sticks were to be removed, one at a time, without disturbing the rest.

And Tegan quickly discovered that even if she was not severely drunk, her hand was obviously not as steady as that of the sheerar princess.

o o o

Meanwhile, the Doctor walked casually down the corridor towards the storage room, humming quietly to himself. Though he was only humming, he was clearly attempting a piece by Rachmaninov and he smiled quietly at several glances from the members of staff he passed.

"Excuse me sir?"

The voice broke the Doctor from his reverie and he looked around to see who had asked. It was a tall man, Caucasian in appearance and yet wearing what was clearly a samurai uniform, complete with swords and an added machine gun. The modern weapon was held casually by his side, but it was unhooked from its position at the man's shoulders and ready to be lifted to use.

"May I enquire your name and rank, sir?" the man asked politely.

"I am the Doctor," the Doctor said. "I am not of any military rank."

"Your presence is required with the imperial chancellor," the man said as more samurai-dressed men appeared behind him.

The Doctor could hear the quiet shuffling of more feet behind him and needed not to turn to see what kind of people they were. "I really don't think I have any business with the chancellor," he said. "I am a guest of her imperial highness, Kimoto Takita sama."

"I know you are, sir," the samurai went on, just as politely. "But I'm afraid I must insist."

"But you see-"

With all the politeness mustered by the samurais, it came as a surprise to the Doctor when the edge of a sheathed sword hammered into his lower back, sending him to his knees, gasping for breath. He managed to regain control of himself and looked up at the man before him with anger flaring in his blue eyes. "Listen, I-"

But the time of listening was obviously at an end. The solid sword casing hit him again, sending him into a crouch on the floor, gasping from the pain across his back. He looked up, trying to force words past his lips, but the butt of the samurai's machine gun came straight towards his face and the Doctor knew no more.

o o o

_To be continued…_


	8. No Room to Swing a Cat Part 8

**No Room to Swing a Cat**

_The Doctor and Tegan Jovanka are property of the BBC – you know the drill. Kimoto Takita and most everybody else are my creations!_

_The princess should have listened to her finely tuned instincts, but in stead she and Tegan ate and drank, having a good time. And while they continue to do that, the Doctor finds himself in a most unpleasant situation._

Part eight

The Doctor was made from a sturdier stuff than most humans and that was probably why he came round while still lying on a gurney, just as it was brought to a stop. He was lying on his back, head askew so that his face was turned to his right side from which several people could be heard.

"So this is the expert?" The voice, heard through as the Doctor quickly regained his full consciousness without showing any sign of it, was scornful and stressing the word 'expert' in such a fashion as to make it clear how he disdained it.

"Yes, Ashim sama," another voice replied. It was the voice of the samurai who had accosted him in the corridor. "I asked him his name and rank, but he referred only to himself as 'doctor' and denied having any military rank."

"I see. Do you have any idea where he entered the palace?"

"No, Ashim sama. But I shall continue to make enquiries."

"Do that. I want the name of the guard who let him in. His imperial majesty will be very disappointed about this. Very. I need hardly stress his concern regarding his daughter?"

"No, Ashim sama."

"Well, leave us now and try and find out about his entry."

"Yes, Ashim sama."

The Doctor, eyes still closed, heard quiet footsteps of several people leaving the room.

"Oh, and Fawcett?" the scornful voice called, making one pair of footsteps halt.

"Yes, Ashim sama?" The voice of the same samurai.

"Make sure that your men have the other woman fully under surveillance. I shall want to hear everything new about her. The princess seems to have taken a liking to her and she may prove herself useful."

"Yes, Ashim sama."

The sounds of footsteps faded away and the Doctor heard a sliding door being closed. He chanced to open an eye, just a little, to look around.

If he had expected to be alone with his captor in the room, he was disappointed. Along the wall he could see from his position, several samurai-clad men stood guard, armed with both traditional and modern weapons and obviously noticing that his eye had opened.

Sighing ever so slightly, the Doctor opened his eyes entirely and sat up on the gurney.

"You are awake, Doctor?" the voice from before sounded and the Doctor turned to see the man named Ashim. He was wearing traditional garments and had a stoic Asian face, and his almond shaped dark eyes were surveying the Doctor with somewhat less contempt than he had expected from his comments just before.

"Yes, thank you for asking," the Doctor said. Swinging his long legs off of the gurney and not being told otherwise, he got up standing. "Am I to assume I have the honour of addressing chancellor Ashim sama of the imperial court?"

"Yes." The chancellor gazed at the Doctor, trying to read him. "And uncle of her imperial highness, Kimoto sama. Are you well?"

"Yes, everything considered, I am," the Doctor said, hiding his surprise at the unexpected concern.

"Good. Please do sit down and have a cup of tea," he continued, gesturing towards a table set for two. "It will help you get over whatever pain you may feel after my men so hastily struck you down. I can assure you that their over eagerness has been noted and will have consequences."

"The chancellor is most kind," the Doctor said appreciatively and went to sit down on the cushions in front of the low table.

"I would have offered a new guest a tea ceremony," the chancellor remarked. "But time does not allow for such ceremony and we shall have to take our tea as it is."

"That will be just fine, I am sure," the Doctor assured his host.

"Good, I appreciate your kindness."

The chancellor took the small teapot on the table and poured them both steaming green tea into small earthenware cups. Then he methodically sat down the pot and took his own cup in both hands, turning it and sipping the scalding liquid. The Doctor, not unfamiliar with Japanese tea customs, did likewise, smacking his lips appreciatively at the characteristic taste of really good green tea.

"Doctor?" the chancellor asked, putting down his cup almost reluctantly. "Is that your title or your name?"

"A little of both, actually," the Doctor replied.

"I see. This is also what I have been told by the chief engineer." He looked at the Doctor. "Please do not be upset about her openness, she is required to report to me if anything strange occurs within the princess' quarters."

"I understand."

"You understand, I am sure, the importance of keeping her highness safe and secure, sheltered from outside harm?"

"But of course."

"Good." Chancellor Ashim sat for a moment, contemplating his teacup and sipping it carefully again before looking straight at the Doctor. "Then you understand that it is my duty to find out what this little affair is all about? And that I have the authority to act on behalf of his imperial majesty, the emperor of Honshu II?"

"Yes." The Doctor responded more carefully now, quietly sipping the tea and contemplating the man before him.

"The princess is not well. As a doctor, are you aware of this?"

"I am," the Doctor replied, noting that Ashim did not seem pleased about this.

"Has she told you about her ailment?"

"She has told me of her predicament," the Doctor said, meeting Ashim's look without blinking.

"I see. And what has she told you about it?"

"I am not at all sure I should be discussing this with you," the Doctor replied, putting down his cup with a forced calmness. "I don't think she would like that."

"She is sick!" Ashim exclaimed, his calmness leaving his voice. "She has a mental condition, delusions, manic behaviour, and you speak about what she would and would not like?"

"It is my impression that she is quite capable of having a personal opinion." The Doctor met the angry eyes of Ashim with calm dignity. "I really think that you should stop trying to persuade me that she is ill, milord Ashim. Considering that we both know better."

"And this is your medical opinion?" Ashim hissed, the warning evident in both his tone and his demeanour.

"It is my conclusion, yes," the Doctor said, getting up. "And now, if you don't mind, I think I should like to return to the company of her highness."

"I mind," Ashim said, also getting up. "Now, we can do this in two ways, the hard way or the easy way. The easy way, which you just seem to have passed on, is that you cooperate with me. The hard one is that I use the authority granted to me."

"I don't see in what way I have failed to cooperate," the Doctor said while several of the samurais came over, summoned by a gesture from Ashim.

"You have questioned the diagnosis declaring her highness' condition."

"I must have missed something."

"Indeed you have, Doctor."

"Yes," the Doctor agreed. "I failed to realise that you did not want an educated opinion. You just wanted another person to accept what you so profoundly misname by calling it a diagnosis and a treatment. When all you really do is to try to brainwash that poor child into submission. But I refuse to call it anything else than what it is."

"How dare you!"

"No, how dare you?" the Doctor spat back. "You, who have reached such a position of trust in a system well liked by a vast majority of the people of Honshu II. Trusted by an emperor who has grown old and weak but who has also done so much good for his people. What is it you achieve by this? Personal gratification? Wealth? You are right, I am missing something. Your behaviour does not make much sense to me."

The chancellor had grown quite pale under the onslaught of the Doctor's words. Now he frantically gestured to his guards, who immediately seized the Doctor none too gently.

"I'll have you regret this!" he yelled, spittle flying from his lips. "I'll have you take back those words and crawl before me, begging my forgiveness for your impudence!"

"How?" the Doctor asked, his voice not rising despite the guards grip and the anger in Ashim's red face. "By submitting me to the same so-called treatments as those you offer your emperor's daughter? Does he even know that they are little more than sophisticated electric and chemical torture?"

"Silence!"

"People like you always fail in the end," the Doctor went on. "What is it that makes you insist on this? Do you not have enough power? Enough wealth? Why must you-" He was interrupted as one of the samurais backhanded him across his face, a blow that would have sent him sprawling if he had not been held by two others. As it was, he tasted blood.

"Make him quiet and then have him placed in one of my private cells," Ashim ordered, turning his back on the Doctor.

"I really wouldn't do that if I were you," the Doctor tried. "We could still negotiate this situation, you know."

But the sliding door was closed behind Ashim and the samurais turned towards the Doctor. At least they didn't look as if they took any pleasure from their job as the two forced the Doctor onto his knees and a third raised a baton, aiming it carefully…

o o o

"He sure is taking his time," Kim muttered as she almost casually removed the final two Mikado-sticks. "Oh, and I win. Again."

"This is getting boring," Tegan moaned back. "You're good at it. Too good."

"Admit defeat, milady Jovanka san," Kim grinned. "And I shall show mercy."

"What's that 'san' you keep saying?" Tegan asked, getting up from her chair and stretching.

"It is a polite form of address to add to a person's name," Kim explained. "And if it is a superior, one can honour him or her by adding 'sama' instead. It's tradition, even if many here seem to have forgotten precisely why we say it."

"So, you'd be Kimoto sama then?"

"To you, I would be something like 'your most gracious and superior imperial highness and mistress of the Mikado sticks'," Kim said, bowing her head gracefully. "But how about we go to see where the Doctor has gone. I know, you said that this here TARDIS is a lot bigger on the inside, but that doesn't mean that he should take two hours finding his way, does it?"

"Two hours?" Tegan gasped. "Has it been that long?"

"One hour, forty seven minutes," Kim said with a glance onto her wristwatch. "We should go and look for him."

"Hmmm, knowing him, I say he might just have come across something vastly interesting to study in the TARDIS," Tegan observed. "I mean, he can hardly get himself lost within the corridors between here and the storage room."

"You're probably right," Kim nodded. "So, up for another game of mikado?"

"No way, then I'd rather listen to gagaku again."

"Aw c'mon, it wasn't that bad, was it?"

"What, the gagaku or the mikado?"

They were interrupted by a soft knock on the door. Kim called for the person to enter and Allindra came in, bowing first to Kim, then to Tegan. Then she turned to the princess again with worry etched into her Asian features.

"Your highness, I had heard it said amongst the staff that you had company?"

"Yes, I do. This is Tegan Jovanka, rapidly becoming a good friend," Kim introduced the young stewardess.

"And… there is another?" Allindra asked.

"Yes, the Doctor. A man in a bright attire, blond, lean."

"It is as I feared," Allindra said in a hushed voice. "I have heard that such a man was apprehended by chancellor Ashim's personal guard a few hours ago. He was taken to the chancellor's quarters and nobody I have talked to know what has happened there."

"Oh crap!" Kim exclaimed, jumping to her feet, ignoring the slight pain from her foot.

"What do we do?" Tegan asked anxiously. "Can't you just order him to let the Doctor go or something?"

"I wish I could," Kim said, her tail flailing and her ears curved back along her head. "But Ashim wouldn't have done this if he wasn't certain that I would be helpless even if I heard about it."

"I am so sorry, your highness," Allindra said, her head bowed. "I should have told you earlier, but I just didn't know."

"It's okay," Kim said though her every feature seemed to indicate otherwise. "How were you to know?"

"Can't you have your father order that Ashim free the Doctor?" Tegan suggested.

"My father?" Kim spat bitterly. "Hah! He hangs by Ashim's lips and would not change one of his orders for the world. And if he knew that it was an order that I would appreciate the change off…" She let the rest fade and Tegan understood.

"We are on our own in this," the Australian sighed.

"More or less so," Kim nodded. "But not helpless. Not at all helpless."

"What would you suggest we do?"

"For one thing, let's stop feasting and prepare for battle," Kim said tersely. Then she turned and smiled at Tegan. "Sorry, I just couldn't resist the urge to talk like some action movie hero. After all, this may well be that final showdown we all have been waiting for."

"I am, as always, at your service," Allindra reminded them both. "If there's anything I can do."

"As a matter of fact, I think there is," Kim said, a real smile slowly spreading on her feline face.

o o o

The Doctor was placed in a cell somewhere within the palace. He had been out of it for some time and had lost all sense of direction, but the sound of the door slamming had him regain his senses somewhat.

He was on the gurney again. Obviously he had been brought here, rolling on it, and unlike so many of his earlier captors, Ashim's men had not thrown him onto the floor but rather rolled the gurney into the cell and slammed the door shut. Someone had even covered him with a blanket.

Despite the comfort, the Doctor was angry. He had briefly allowed the civilised manner of chancellor Ashim to persuade him into a conversation when in fact it was quite obvious that the chancellor would not allow anything or anyone to change his mind.

The Doctor lay quite still, not opening his eyes. His keen senses told him that he was likely alone in the cell, and even if the guards had administered their 'calming down' with considerable skill, it was still a blow to the head. And the second of its kind in one day.

The Doctor carefully flexed his fingers and then ran them along his scalp, searching out the sore spot where the rifle butt had hit him earlier. It was a dent, there was even a small cut with a little dried blood, but it was not by any standards a serious injury. Then the other bump on the head, the carefully aimed one. Not much of a bump and no cuts.

Good.

Then he opened his eyes carefully and took a brief survey of his surroundings. The cell was empty, save for a bunkbed and a lidded bucket with an obvious purpose. There was no water, no food and nothing else.

Having met Ashim, he felt uncertain what to expect from the chancellor and when to expect it. All he did know was that Ashim was the one in need of treatments, not Kim.

The Doctor doubted that he had a concussion, but he chose to close his eyes, drag the blanket more closely around his slender form and rest while he could.

o o o

Kim took the proffered outfit and donned it quickly. She also put on a scarf, tying it around her head so that it hid the tabby hair from view.

Tegan also put on a uniform. The suit was grey, decorated with the crest of the Takita clan on the one shoulder: A purple bird with wings spread, face forwards in front of a huge red sphere. Tegan guessed correctly that it was supposed to be the sun.

"This way we'll look like part of the maintenance staff," Kim needlessly explained. "It would still be nigh on impossible to get out from the palace, but then, that is not our goal this time. All we need to do is to find our way to wherever the Doctor is kept."

"You make it sound easy," Tegan murmured, taking the broom offered by Allindra.

"It isn't, I know," Kim said. "But at least you don't have to worry if they catch us. I would be at the mercy of Ashim, and he doesn't show mercy easily."

"What would happen to me then?" Tegan asked.

"Either you'd disappear conveniently, getting killed immediately," Kim said nonchalantly, "or you would be discretely taken elsewhere so that the scandal can be contained. But Allindra will tell trusted employees of the emperor about this if we are caught, and that should pretty much ensure your survival."

"And you?"

"Well, have you ever heard of electric boogie?" the feline said lightly. "Do you know how to use this?" she continued, handing Tegan what looked like a small, stubby handgun.

"A gun? Yeah, I think so."

"It's a stunning device," Kim explained. "If we have to fight, I would hate to accidentally kill innocents. It shoots out small darts with electric charges and will keep anybody down for a while. Long enough for us to move on, anyway."

"Like a stun gun?"

"Nope," Kim replied. "Not precisely. This one can be put to use at a distance. You have eight charged darts, which allows for eight targets. Use it up close and you'll be fine."

"Right," Tegan muttered, watching as Kim scooped up a variety of small items and hid them under her garments. "And what are you carrying? It looks like a small arsenal."

"Amongst the emperor's biggest mistakes, second to hiring uncle Ashim," Kim said with a feral grin, "was to allow me to be trained in the martial arts. I think the idea was that I should be able to defend my husband to be. Well, I can do that, and more."

It occurred to Tegan that Kim, even in the dull uniform, seemed much more like a predator than a human. Her eyes were glistening and the tail had been lashing continuously until she hid it inside the legs of her trousers with a dissatisfied grunt.

"Let's go," Kim said in a decisive voice. "I think I know where to begin."

"Good luck, your highness, lady Jovanka." Allindra's quiet voice carried all of her sympathy and both the young women appreciated her support and thanked her before they left the room.

"Where would you begin? This place is huge!" Tegan said as they went down the corridor.

"Yeah, but I know my enemy well. I know what piece of low life scum he has working here as a spy. And I'm sure that he would know where we should go next."

"A spy?"

"Yeah, a servant who has been telling Ashim everything since day one. I didn't think he'd noticed you two," she added grimly. "But it would appear that he did and that he reported you to the slime ball chancellor. Making that mistake makes whatever happens to the Doctor my fault."

"Don't blame yourself," Tegan offered.

"I don't, not yet," Kim responded softly. "But if it turns out that he is hurt, then I will."

o o o

_To be continued…_


	9. No Room to Swing a Cat Part 9

**No Room to Swing a Cat**

_The Doctor and Tegan Jovanka are property of the BBC – you know the drill. Kimoto Takita and most everybody else are my creations!_

_The party's over and Tegan and Kim have to find the Doctor before Ashim makes up his mind regarding his destiny. But is it enough that the princess is on a known territory?_

o o o

Part nine

The Doctor looked as if he was fast asleep on the parked gurney when four samurais entered the cell. They cast him a casual glance and then allowed for a pale man in a white lab coat to come into the cell.

The man bent over the Doctor and reached out a hand as if to touch his face when the Doctor popped open his eyes and looked smilingly at the newcomer.

"Hello," he said. "I am the Doctor. And you?"

"As a matter of fact," the man replied in a huffed tone, "I happen to be the doctor around here. The name is Krentz and I was sent by chancellor Ashim to see that you were fit to talk."

"As you can see, and quite clearly hear, I am," the Doctor beamed happily, seemingly oblivious to his predicament.

"Good," Doctor Krentz nodded. "Let's go and have a talk with the chancellor then."

He nodded to the guards, two of whom seized the handles of the gurney and started to roll it outside.

"I can walk by myself," the Doctor offered.

"Just stay on the gurney," Krentz suggested in a neutral voice. "We prefer it that way. Don't make me order the guard to restrain you."

"By all means," the Doctor harrumphed. "If you insist."

He lay back and enjoyed the ride as best he could, allowing his eyes to dart and survey the route between his hitherto confinement and his unknown destination.

"I don't suppose you'd tell me precisely where we are going?" he asked the white-clad man, and then, after a pause added: "I didn't think so."

The Doctor propped his head up on his hands, resting as if he did not have a care in the world, allowing the well-armed samurais to transport him along.

As it turned out, he didn't have to wait for long. After a few turns and twists, they entered an elevator and, after a few moments going down, exited to a corridor at the end of which he was rolled through a clinical looking set of double doors.

At their arrival, nobody else was in the big room, and Krentz let the Doctor understand that they would wait for a few moments, apparently for Chancellor Ashim to arrive, and that the Doctor was to remain on the gurney while waiting. This gave him time to take in the surroundings.

The room was obviously a hospital ward of some sort,and though the Doctor tried to suppress a shudder, he went cold inside as he looked around. There were examining tables and a bed in the room, along with a variety of machinery and equipment, some of which he recognised as surveillance equipment to monitor a patient's condition – heart rate, blood pressure, the likes. But that was not what made the Doctor feel a sting of terror.

It was the pictures on the wall.

One wall was dominated by several boards, plastered with reports, printouts of cardiograms and results of blood tests as well as a number of big, glossy photographs, all showing the same patient.

It was Kimoto Takita, strapped down to the bed in the centre of this very room, her face contorted in a mask of pain and terror, her teeth bared, her eyes bulgingand unseeing as electrodes attached to her head and other parts so obviously sent currents through her convulsing body.

"I suppose you recognise the patient," a voice interrupted as chancellor Ashim entered the room, escorted by more samurais.

"Why the pictures?" the Doctor asked, a coarse tone in his voice. "Why would you choose to display these?" He hefted himself up onto his elbows.

"Oh, it helps to induce the right mood in my patient," Krentz answered impassively. "She always arrives on foot, escorted by imperial samurais. Always stoic, always pretending that nothing is wrong. But her tail gives her away, as she lays eyes on the images."

"And the emperor approves of this?" the Doctor asked.

"The emperor believes in these methods," Ashim said. "As do I. But let's waste no more time on trivialities. I chose this room for an interrogation because we are largely undisturbed here. I find this to be… best."

"What is it you want to know?" the Doctor said plaintively. "My name, rank and number? As for my name, I doubt that you could pronounce it, even if you tried. My rank is, well, doctor. I have no number as such."

"Very funny, Doctor," Ashim said, his expression showing no sign of mirth. "Now, please do move to that chair over there. And I really expect that you will not try any foolishness."

The Doctor got up from the gurney and went to the chair, all the while carefully followed by four of the samurais, obviously prepared for most anything. He sat down in the high-backed chair, his blue eyes unwavering on the chancellor's face, not blinking while the samurais strapped his hands, legs and torso onto the chair and then operated it to allow him to lean back, legs lifted somewhat from the floor.

"I could ask about your origin," Ashim said, almost lazily. "But honestly, it is of no importance to me. What I do wish to know, is how you gained access to the palace, what you intend to do here and what your interests in the princess are."

"The princess, just to take the important bit first, happens to be a friend of mine," the Doctor replied, his face revealing nothing about the shortness of said friendship. "And she seems to need my help."

"Your help?" Ashim's voice was scornful. "So, you intended to help her away from here? Is that it?"

"Yes."

"How did you get in here?" Ashim asked, a dangerous tone in his voice. "Did you bribe the guard? Or does the princess have a secret entrance?"

"No such thing," the Doctor said, twisting his one hand slightly against the restraints. "I entered the palace through an unseen entrance, and I planned to leave much the same way."

"Where?"

"I really couldn't say," the Doctor shrugged.

"Why would you take her away from the palace?" the Chancellor inquired. "For a ransom? For your own pleasures?"

"Neither," the Doctor's voice had taken on a sharp edge and anger flared in his eyes. "But I don't expect you to understand that."

"Doctor whatever your name," Ashim spat; bending down to look straight into the Doctor's face. "I will have doctor Krentz demonstrate his skill to you. As a colleague, I am sure you'll appreciate it. And then I'll ask you the same questions again. And if you do not answer in a manner I find satisfying, -"

"You will have doctor Krentz continue?" the Doctor suggested warily. "Why must all thugs do that?"

The comment seemed to take Ashim off balance. He quickly regained his composure and stared at the Doctor with dark, angry eyes.

"Krentz san, would you please demonstrate your skill to this doctor?" he said, stepping back and taking a nearby chair to sit.

"Yes, Ashim sama," the white clad man said, bowing ever so slightly before him. Then he turned to the Doctor and regarded him briefly, studying his victim.

He then went to a nearby table, just outside the Doctor's view, where he busied himself with items, making small clanking and rustling noises.

Then he returned to the Doctor and gazed at him, a syringe in his one hand. Without further ado, he folded back the sleeve on the Doctor's left arm, revealing skin which he cleaned off with an alcohol swab. "This," he said to the man before him, "may sting!"

It did, ever so slightly.

But it was not as painful as the things he did afterwards…

o o o

"Have you seen combat before?" Kim asked in a low voice as she stopped outside a door.

"Yeah, some," Tegan replied, not sounding very proud about it. "Why?"

"I expect that this may turn a bit nasty," the sheerer said tersely. "I doubt he will be nice."

"What will you do?"

"Force the little prick into revealing what we need to know," Kim said, her voice quivering slightly. It occurred to Tegan that Kim's coy words were hiding a very nervous girl beneath.

"How?" the Australian asked.

"Dunno, I guess we'll have to improvise. Let's go and see, okay?"

Tegan nodded as Kim briefly glanced at her, then the princess pushed open the door before them and they both entered quickly, Tegan closing the door behind them.

Inside were a small flat with a living room, a kitchenette and two open doors leading into a small bedroom and a toilet. There was also a man in there, a balding but tall man, sitting at a table in the living room with headphones, totally caught up in some papers spread before him. The whisper of some string music sounded faintly from the headphones. He had his back to the door and had clearly not heard them.

Kim locked the door very quietly, arching an eyebrow at Tegan with an expression of satisfaction. Then she tiptoed towards the man until she stood right behind him, he face twisted into a semblance of an evil grin.

With one swift motion, she tore the headphones from the man's head. He jumped at this, gave a muffled yell and leaped from his chair, turning as he did so to gaze at the intruders.

"Hello, Hatfield," Kim smiled ferally as she threw the head phones onto the floor, having unplugged them from the stereo set next to the table. "How nice to see you. I have a few questions to ask of you."

"Your highness needed only ask," the man said, bowing before her, clutching the lapels of his powder green shirt. "There was no need to scare me like that. Well, lest it was to the liking of your highness, of course," he continued meekly.

"I did knock," Kim lied. "But obviously you didn't hear me. Now, please explain to me where Uncle Ashim would take prisoners of he wished to keep them to himself."

"Prisoners, your highness?" the man said wide-eyed. "Why, I wouldn't know anything about that. I am but a servant and matters of prisoners are for the chancellors involved in police work or intelligence, such as Ashim sama, and for their trusted men."

"Don't start now, Hatfield," Kim groaned. "You are amongst his trusted men, we both know that. I've known ever since you squealed about my spare key to the western Dragon Gate."

"But your highness," the man said, bowing again. "I have done no such thing. I would never betray your trust. You are a Takita and I live and die before the house of Takita! But why, if I may so bold as to ask, is your highness clad in the attire of servants? And accompanied by a menial?"

"Tempting thought, living and dying for my house," Kim agreed with cold, feline eyes. "But I don't suppose I would be that lucky. No, Hatfield, please save us both the trouble and tell me what I want to know."

"Your highness," Hatfield said, his voice growing tender. "I fear that you are not well. Have you taken your prescription drugs? You should be in bed."

"Drop it, Hatfield." Kim was somewhat shorter than the tall man, but she still surveyed him with an air of authority. "I ask again, but for the last time. Where would unca Ashim put prisoners?"

"I honestly have no idea," the servant insisted. "How would I know such… such…" He choked and suddenly fell to his knees, staring at Kim with a strange mixture of pain and exhilaration, his one hand grasping at the collar of his shirt, the other waving at his side as if to grasp onto something he couldn't quite find.

"Hatfield…" Kim murmured in a purring voice, gazing unfocused at the face of the servant.

Tegan, who had remained in the background, took a tentative step forward and saw that the eyes of the princess were as locked with those of the kneeling and choking servant. The air in the room felt sultry and the Australian could almost feel a headache building. Whatever was happening, it was downright scary. She did not, however, dare to break what Kim was doing.

"Hatfield…" Kim purred in a throaty voice. "Ashimmm…"

"Your highhhhh…" coughed the man warily, his face reddening and his staring eyes unseeing. Tegan saw that a few drops of blood were escaping from his nose.

"Yesss…" This time Kim's voice was barely audible.

The man coughed again, his jugular vein standing out as if trying to break free of the skin, and his eyes rolling back into his head so that only the white was showing.

"Aaaaaahhh…"

Suddenly, as if somebody had thrown a switch, the servant gave a single spasm and collapsed to the floor. Kim reeled, turned and retched violently, her face pale and sweaty.

"Kim? Are you all right?" Tegan asked as she came over. "What happened?"

"Moment please," Kim coughed, spitting and then retching again. She stood for a few moments, one hand against the wall, spilling all that was left of the day's culinary feast. Then she staggered to the kitchenette where she opened the faucet and rinsed her face, wiping it dry with a tea towel.

"That," she whispered in a raw voice, "was not very pleasant."

"What did you do?" Tegan asked a little hesitantly.

"I tried to use my mind probe on that little shithead," Kim explained. "I have had it in me for years and it has grown stronger lately. Perhaps, as the Doctor said, because I am maturing. I don't know, I just know that Hatfield was not going to give on his own."

"That was amazing," Tegan said. "So, what happens now?"

"As soon as I have made sure the little twerp will not follow us, we go to Ashim's private prison quarters," Kim said, returning to kneel by the prone form of the servant, tea towel in one hand. "Isn't it peculiar that one of the heads of intelligence around here is in need of private prison cells?"

"It does sound a bit strange," Tegan admitted.

"Oh DAMNED!" Kim yelped, jumping up from her position next to Hatfield and backing away, fear evident in her face. "Oh no! Oooooh cripes!"

"What's the matter?"

"I…" Kim sobbed, turning to look at Tegan, tears flowing from her huge eyes. "I have… Hatfield, he is…"

"Oh no," Tegan muttered.

"He is dead! I've killed him!"

o o o

"This man is very resilient!" doctor Krentz observed, putting a hand under the Doctor's chin, lifting it to look at his slack face. "He looks like a human, but he obviously isn't. For one thing, he seems to have a double cardiovascular system and his breathing also seem different. I wonder where he's from."

"Well, that's what we are trying to find out, isn't it," Ashim snarled, his impatience evident. "What's taking you so long? You usually break people within the half hour. Human or not, he is obviously not immune to electricity."

"No, but the drugs that should have prevented him from fainting seem to have less effect on him. The last couple of times I have increased the current, he has simply passed out. I cannot condition a man who is without consciousness."

"Wake him up then," Ashim demanded.

"I'm trying," doctor Krentz assured his master. "But this time it doesn't seem to be working. It is as if he is subconsciously refusing to wake up. After all, there is refuge in unconsciousness."

"You are an expert, do what you must. I want to know who he is as why he is here."

Krentz nodded, looking troubled. He had tried smelling salts, he had tried salt water and he had tried small electrodes in various places that usually provoked a human to wake up. He had even attempted various potent drugs that would normally provoke a patient to react, but to no avail.

Now he tried to apply electric currents where it would most definitely hurt the most. His insulated and gloved hands were shaking ever so slightly as he performed the procedure and he cursed himself mentally for his sudden insecurity. But other than a few local spasms caused by the current, the Doctor remained unresponsive.

Krentz continued his work, now connecting the Doctor to a variety of the surveillance equipment in the room. He had already been monitoring his heart rates as best he could, considering the Doctor's special physiognomy. Now he attached electrodes for the electroencephalogram and attached monitors for blood oxygenation and oxygen contents in the patient's breathing air.

The encephalogram was strange to be sure. It almost seemed as if the man before him was going comatose. His oxygen levels seemed to indicate the same. Doctor Krentz did not like this at all, and slowly he turned to face the chancellor, printout from the encephalogram still in his hand.

"I am afraid that I cannot wake him up," doctor Krentz announced. "He seems to be slipping into a coma. There is very little I can do to prevent it."

"Have you failed in your ministrations?" Ashim barked. "Is it because of your treatments that he is out like that?"

"I really cannot say," Krentz muttered, removing his gloves. "But it is possible that he is reacting negatively to the drugs I have used. He doesn't seem in a toxic state, but then he is not human. The electric stimuli should not have induced this state. Though painful, they were far from at any really dangerous levels when he last passed out."

"Find out then," Ashim said, getting to his feet. "Keep trying to wake him up. And if you do, continue your work. You know what I want from him."

"Yes, Ashim sama."

"If he doesn't come round soon, place him in a secure cell and have the guard fetch the girl instead. Perhaps she is less resilient than her friend here."

"Yes, Ashim sama," Krentz bowed to the retreating figure, who stopped by the door and turned towards him.

"Oh, and doctor Krentz?"

"Yes?"

"Have the room prepared for her highness also. Soon the wedding is too close to commence treatments. I really should be happy if they are not needed anymore when that time comes. Do you think this can be achieved?"

"I think the results at the last session were very positive," Krentz assured the chancellor. "If we can induce the same state again a few more times, along with the proper medication, I think the treatments can be concluded."

"That would please the emperor," Ashim smiled. "And the Count Matsudaira."

With that, he was gone from the room. The door was closed behind him by one of the unspeaking guards, and Doctor Krentz turned back to continue his attempts at reviving his unmoving patient, the Doctor.

o o o

_To be continued…_


	10. No Room to Swing a Cat Part 10

**No Room to Swing a Cat**

_The Doctor and Tegan Jovanka are property of the BBC – you know the drill. Kimoto Takita and most everybody else are my creations!_

_A man has been killed at Kim's attempt to force information from him, and the Doctor is in a coma and at the mercy of one of Ashim's lackeys. What more can possibly go wrong?_

Part ten

"Are you sure, he's dead?" Tegan asked as Kim almost ran to the wall for support, looking as if she'd fall without a good, strong wall to lean on. "Couldn't he just be out of it?"

"He's dead," the princess sobbed.

"How can you be sure?"

"No breathing, no pulse, nothing in his staring eyes," Kim yelled frantically. "What more do you want? A bloody post mortem?"

"No," Tegan said and came over to the shivering sheerar, putting her hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry," she said. "But I don't think it's your fault."

"'Course it is", Kim sobbed, turning into the offered embrace and burying her face on Tegan's shoulder, warm tears flowing freely. "I did it, he died. I'll never use that probe crap again."

"There, there," Tegan tried awkwardly, stroking Kim's hair gently. "You couldn't know. And as you said, he refused to help us. At least now we may be able to find the Doctor."

"Find the Doctor…" Kim said in a rusty voice, suddenly looking up. "You're right. It would be unforgivably stupid not to use the knowledge gained now."

"Yeah, it would," Tegan agreed.

"I am a really impressive warrior and martial arts expert, huh?" Kim groaned, freeing herself from the embrace and wiping her tear-streaked face with the tea towel. "Breaking into hysterics at the first casualty. My teacher, the honourable master Jönsson, would scald me."

"Master what?" Tegan exclaimed.

"Master Jönsson?" Kim looked questioningly at Tegan. "What's wrong with that?"

"Oh nothing, it just doesn't sound much like an honourable master of martial arts, that's all."

"Oh he was very skilled. Is, he's not dead. He has just moved elsewhere to perform his art. And he would have been quite scornful of my reaction."

"Are you sure of that?" Tegan asked quietly.

"No…" Kim muttered. "Not really. He always did say that any fool could take a life, but the true warrior should know when not to. I suppose he also would have…" she gasped in a cross between a hiccup and a sob, "would have minded this death."

"It was an accident," Tegan insisted.

"Yeah…"

"Let's go and find the Doctor then," Tegan suggested, her voice much more confident than she felt.

"Yeah…"

"Dry your eyes and let's go. The servant look won't be very good if your face is all messy," Tegan said, turning on the faucet again and taking a napkin, soaking it with cold water. "Here."

"Thanks, you're right." Kim washed her face superficially and then threw the wet napkin next to the sink. "It's funny, really. Well, not funny-ha-ha, but a bit funny all the same."

"What is?"

"This… death. I have killed a man, even if it was an accident. But I am Princess Kimoto Takita of the imperial bloodline. I will not be punished, I am above the law."

"Really?"

"Yeah, not that it makes much sense." Kim managed a thin smile, obviously trying to avoid looking at the prone form on the floor. "But in theory, the emperor can kill whomever he chooses. Of course, if he started to do so regularly, the people would probably rally against him."

"But it means that you are not even a wanted murderer now?" Tegan asked. "That's great, isn't it?"

"Yeah, any child of the direct bloodline has the same right. Ancient tradition and almost never used. History books have accounts of the few cases where it has."

"Anyway," Tegan said, rummaging through the cupboard for a glass and finding one, which she started to fill with cold water. "I'm not even sure anybody will guess that you did this. He looks as if he's had a heart attack or something. Your fingerprints are not on the body, nor is there any sign of a poison or a weapon, right?" She handed the glass of water to Kim and said: "Here, drink this."

The sheerar did and then put down the glass, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "You're right. Nobody needs to know that I killed him today." She turned towards the door, suddenly a lot calmer. Quietly she made sure that the scarf over her hair was still in place and then put her hand on the door's handle. Listening for a brief moment, she then opened the door and went outside, followed closely by Tegan.

"But I won't forget it…" she whispered quietly under her breath.

o o o

The knock on the doorframe of chancellor Ashim's office was very quiet, almost as if the person knocking was hoping not to be heard.

"Come," was the merciless reply.

A samurai entered, dressed in all the pompous attire, carrying the grand swords and a fan in his belt. His face, however, did not have the stoic look one would have expected of a true samurai. He looked distinctly uncomfortable.

"Ashim sama," he said, bowing. "I regret to inform you that the stranger, the girl, is no longer in the princess' quarters."

"She isn't?" Ashim growled. "Well, did you ask the princess about her then?"

"Well, erh…" the samurai hesitated. "She's not there either."

"What are you telling me, Tetsu san?" Ashim jumped to his feet, anger flaring in his eyes as he stared in disbelief at the samurai. "They are gone? Both of them?"

"Yes, Ashim sama," the samurai said quietly. "No guard has seen them leave, so they are likely still within palace grounds."

"Likely!" Ashim roared as he stepped around the desk to stand face to face with the samurai. The guard, Tetsu, was obviously uncomfortable with this, but it was still clear to the chancellor that he should not follow his instincts and strike the man before him. He was, after all, a samurai, and such indignity would not be tolerated, even from an imperial chancellor. Ashim stared at him briefly and then backed off a few paces. "You know as well as I do, that the princess has left unnoticed before today. I want the guards doubled. Nay, tripled. And I do not wish for the emperor to be informed lest he specifically asks about his daughter or we are sure she has left the buildings. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Ashim sama." The samurai was just as uninterested in dishonour as the chancellor. They did share an understanding after all.

"Now go and find her," Ashim demanded. "Use all the men you need, Tetsu san. I shall hold you personally responsible. The princess is not capable to of moving on her own and if discovered outside the palace, she may cause a scandal again. But if you are swift, then we may yet be spared the dishonour."

"Yes, Ashim sama," Tetsu said, bowing. Then he turned on his heel and left the room.

Ashim went back to sit down in his chair. This was bad news indeed, but Tetsu was one of his best men, loyal and obedient, the kind of samurai who took the title and honour seriously, not like a lot of the other samurais in the palace who just saw the codes, the attire and the swords as quaint leftovers of days bygone.

But Ashim knew better. In the long run, it was men like Tetsu and himself, who assured the continued survival of house Takita and its grip on the power of Honshu II.

o o o

"On the other side of this door is a corridor, and at the other end of that, we find the cells and…" Kim's voice faltered briefly and she took a deep breath. "With just a bit of luck, we will find the Doctor there too."

"What about guards?" Tegan asked, staring nervously at the closed door. They had descended into the depths of the palace basement levels, guided by Kim's instincts and the knowledge gained from the servant Hatfield. "If there are prison cells, wouldn't there be guards?"

"Undoubtedly," Kim responded, her fingers almost lazily closing around the handle of her gun. "And that's why we are armed too. If they recognise me, they will hesitate severely to use terminal force."

"Terminal force…" Tegan swallowed. "You mean, kill?"

"That is the euphemism used, yes," Kim whispered, unholstering her gun and making sure that it was ready to fire. "But if they know me, that won't happen. Now, being that we are dressed as we are, they may not. In that case, well, you can probably guess."

"So this is it, then?" Tegan asked, preparing her own gun in the manner explained earlier by Kim.

"Yeah…"

"I'm ready." Tegan did not at all feel up to this, but in the realisation that the Doctor would have done the same for her, she found that she could do no less for him.

"Three," Kim whispered, placing a hand on the door handle.

Tegan swallowed again. Why was her throat so dry?

"Two," Kim continued, her grasp firmer.

Tegan shifted her hands on the gun.

"One…" Kim also flexed her own fingers around her weapon and gave a last, brief glance at her friend.

Then she opened the door.

Kim had expected that the two of them would have to hurry into the corridor and attack whoever was there, guns firing the low-noise darts at everything moving and trying to win a potentially unwinnable fight.

She had not expected what happened.

The door opened into the landing on which they were standing, and as soon as Kim had pushed the handle and opened it, it slammed open under most of the weight of the guard who had been leaning up against it. Noisily the samurai fell backwards and onto the floor between Kim and Tegan, yelping in surprise and unsuccessfully trying to gain a foothold before slamming his back into the iron floor, sending a loud clang reverberating all the way through the seven storey stairwell.

All three of them were almost equally surprised, but Tegan was the fastest to recover and without really thinking, she turned her stubby gun at the man and fired once. He was already staring at her in disbelief; now he gave a sharp twitch and lay still, his eyes half-way closed.

"Hee hee, that was a bit too close," Kim wheezed and it occurred to Tegan that her friend's whiskers were standing out again. She wondered if her tail had also fluffed up.

"Yeah," Tegan agreed, whiping her brow.

"You have good reflexes," the princess observed, feeling at the downed guard's neck and then jumping towards the door. "He's okay. Let's get going while our luck holds."

"Yeah…"

They both went through the door, fast and yet keeping a careful eye towards the corridor.

To the one side there were a few more metres of corridor, ending in an expansion with an elevator. To the other side, the corridor continued for a distance before twisting to the left.

Tegan fell behind as the young sheerar raced towards the part of the corridor where it turned, her bare feet obviously having a very firm grip on the floor.

Two samurais came round the corner, obviously summoned by their fallen comrade's yelp and the noise produced. Kim shot the one before Tegan had fully registered their presence and then, almost jumping up the wall, she made a sideways somersault and threw herself towards the other wall, shooting the second guard before he had any time to align his rifle.

The exchange was brief and eerily quiet, and both men were lying on the floor by the time Tegan came to the turn. Kim made a brief stop to feel at their necks and seemed satisfied, all the while staring down the next part of the corridor.

"That was amazing!" Tegan said as she reached her friend. "You looked like Bruce Lee on a really good day!"

"Who?" Kim asked, getting to her feet again. "Well, never mind. Let's just get on with it. Samurai guards usually operate in threes so that the guard is not left alone if one should be disabled or have to go to the little warriors' room."

"Little warriors' room?" Tegan said with a half-smile.

"Yeah, even samurai have to piss from time to time."

"Right. Now what?"

"We hope that the guard here was three and not six men strong," Kim murmured in a tense voice. "C'mon, let's move on. The cells should be at the end of this corridor."

They continued down the corridor, seemingly unheeded by any more guards. At the end, it formed a T-junction with another short corridor with the first doors they had encountered since coming down here. These doors were obviously cell doors as they had heavy locks on the outside and a small, observation hatch atop each door.

There were, however, also three more samurais here.

This time, Kim gave no indication of anything to Tegan, who was following a few steps behind. She just threw herself forwards in a roll, firing her weapon repeatedly down the right hallway towards the guards.

These guards did however seem somewhat more prepared for at attack and had their weapons at the ready. A virtual hailstorm of bullets ripped the edge of the wall, just before Tegan poked her head out to see what was happening. More bullets tore where Kim had been moments earlier, and a man yelled that they should surrender.

Tegan had thrown herself backwards as the bullets had sent dust and debris into her face, and she tried not to think about what would have happened if she had been at the corner just two seconds earlier.

Then silence fell on the corridor again and Kim's voice penetrated the dust in the air, asking if she was okay.

"You really are something, you know that?" Tegan coughed, wiping a small trickle of blood from a minor scrape on her brow and advancing into the now quiet cell corridor. "I'm okay, it was just a bit close. And you?"

"I'll live," came the reply. Kim was getting up from the floor, wiping her hands against the fabric of her trousers. "Sheesh," she muttered, bending over. "I need my tail! A cat needs her tail to keep perfect balance. That's why it is torture to cropthe tail from an animal. Especially felines."

"Are you all right?" Tegan asked, suddenly not liking the sharp edge that had seeped into the sheerar's voice. After the briefest of glances up the corridor, making sure that the three samurais were unmoving, she came over and looked at Kim, who was still bent over.

"Like I said," Kim muttered defiantly, once again wiping her hand against her grey trousers. "I will live. A cat has nine lives, remember?"

Now Tegan saw the smear of dark against the light grey fabric. It was clearly blood.

"How bad is it?" the Australian gasped, covering her mouth with a frightened hand. "Where have you been hit?"

"Chest and arm," Kim admitted, turning and straightening up to allow her friend to see.

Just about one hand's breadth under the shoulder, the fabric of the uniform had been torn, both on the upper left arm and on the side of the chest. Blood was seeping slowly from the wound in the arm but it was the huge, darkened area on the left side of the torso that worried Tegan the most.

"That's bad," she said, plaintively.

"Yeah, it is," Kim smiled, her eyes more feline now and her white canines glittering as she bared them more than a normal smile would demand. "I don't think the lung is punctured, but I sure don't feel very much like strumming the shamisen right now. My arm hurts, but that's just a flesh wound, as they say. Did you know that it seems to me that flesh hurts much more than bone and sinew? That makes the 'just a flesh wound' a tad silly, don't you think?"

"We have to get out of here," Tegan muttered, reaching out to offer Kim a hand.

"Thanks, but we need to get the Doctor out," Kim replied, declining the offered hand. "If I lie down now, I won't be able to help him. We have to move while we still can."

"Are you sure about this?" Tegan asked worriedly.

"No, but what do we have to loose?"

Tegan did not know exactly what to reply to this and thus just followed closely, holding onto her gun for protection as Kim lead the way to the table where the guards had been seated before the fight.

There she quickly accessed the computer standing on the table and punched a few keys before looking up at her companion with a satisfied look.

"There's no doubt, this is his file," she said, tapping a few more keys. "Human, unidentified, charged with illegal entering into the palace. Oh, and the only prisoner here at present. Blond, blue eyes, blah, blah, yeah… Oh…"

"What is it?" Tegan scowled at the princess with a concerned frown. "What's wrong? Are your wounds too bad to go on?"

"Erh…"

"Tell me," Tegan demanded nervously.

"He has been taken about an hour ago by Doctor Krentz, to the…" Kim paused, suddenly paler than before. "To the clinic."

"The clinic?"

"That's where they perform my treatments. They are probably busy with him right now."

Kim's huge emerald eyes were glassy, and she gazed at Tegan with terror. "The electrodes," she murmured.

"Well," Tegan said in a tense attempt at a feisty voice. "I guess we'll just have to get him out of there then. Do you know where this clinic is?"

"Yes." The answer was barely a whisper, and tears welled forth in the sheerar's eyes.

"Well, is it far?" Tegan insisted.

"No…" Kim coughed and briefly hid her face behind a hand, then she visibly pulled herself together and straightened up. "No, it isn't. Let's go."

She led them back the way they had come, this time to the elevator, where she pushed the button to go down. As they waited for the elevator, Tegan studied Kim, not oblivious to her laboured breathing and pale features.

"Are you sure you can do this?" she asked hesitantly.

"I'll manage, if it's those bullet wounds you are referring to," Kim said, rubbing her left arm and sighing ever so slightly. "And as for the other one, I actually think it has stopped bleeding now."

"That's good," Tegan said, not too convinced though, but needing Kim's help all the same. "But keep me posted on this. After all, it wouldn't be good if you just collapsed on me when the action starts again."

"Really," Kim replied, managing a pale grin at her friend. "I can manage. Remember the sheerar in me, I have abetter constitution than most humans. Been there, done that, as they say."

"Been shot at before?" Tegan asked incredulously, gaping at her.

"Well, no, I don't make a habit of getting shot at," Kim grunted, rubbing her sore left side. "But I have been pretty messed up at times, running from guards, playing on the Lion Tower roof and falling down, getting a solid thrashing from my trainer, that kind of thing."

"Your trainer beat you?"

"Yeah, well, one doesn't learn much from just being shown or by having scores subtracted," Kim shrugged and then winced. "And here it is accepted to take a beating from a master, it's all part of the code and all that. But here's the elevator, and I can assure you that I shan't faint on you."

But Tegan could see that the princess was gritting her teeth and had her whiskers standing out and her ears flat again. She was quickly learning to interpret these signs.

"It's okay to be afraid," she said soothingly. "I'm scared too."

"Yeah," Kim muttered, swallowing. "And you haven't seen what's down there."

"No… But I guess I will?"

The elevator doors opened and they stepped into it. Kim pushed the lowest button and the doors quietly slid close.

"We'll just have to try," Tegan muttered defiantly.

"Yeah," Kim agreed weakly. We'll have to stop them torturing the Doctor!"

o o o

_To be continued…_


	11. No Room to Swing a Cat Part 11

**No Room to Swing a Cat**

_The Doctor and Tegan Jovanka are property of the BBC – you know the drill. Kimoto Takita and most everybody else are my creations!_

_Kim is a trained fighter and she and Tegan are prepared to go to Hell and back in order to save the Doctor. But to Kim, Hell is nothing much compared to the place they are going…_

Part eleven

The elevator doors quietly slid open to reveal a short, nondescript corridor leading to a set of double doors at the other end.

"Is this where you think they have the Doctor?" Tegan asked, her voice hushed by the clinical surroundings. Then she saw Kim's face.

The feline had never looked so little like a human. Her features were pale and her usually big eyes seemed to take up nearly half her face. Her whiskers, normally fairly discreet, stood out like so much thread under static and her ears lay flat backwards.

"Kim?" Tegan asked softly. "Are you all right?"

"No," Kim replied, her voice hoarse and her hand involuntarily going to absentmindedly caress the wound at her side. "No, I am not all right. Never really will be as long as that…" her voice faltered and she almost slumped. "I'm not sure I can do this," she admitted, eyes downcast.

"What do you mean?" Tegan exclaimed, staring at her friend with surprise. "You are a warrior. I saw you fight those guards and the Doctor needs us. Are there more guards in there? Is that it? Well, we've got to try."

"I am a warrior, as well as so much else," Kim whispered, raising her face but not really seeing Tegan. "But that place is… I cannot… I fear it!"

"Why?"

"Remember I told you that I have received treatments?" Kim asked, clutching her arms as if suddenly cold. "Well, this is where they perform them. My nightmares take place in there!"

"Well, you are not at their mercy now," Tegan said with more certainty than she felt. "We are together and we will save the Doctor, and then he can help you to get out of here."

"Out of here," Kim repeated in a dead voice. "Not in there."

"Kim!"

"Not in there…"

"Kim…" Tegan turned towards her friend and slapped her lightly across the face, gripping her unwounded arm and shaking her gently. At least this finally made the princess look at her. "Pull yourself together, mate. Three people, the Doctor, myself and you, depend on you not loosing your nerve now. How do you expect me to get out of here without you? Not to mention the Doctor? And without him, you're going to marry that Count Matsu Whatshisname and wind up a bitter old cat!"

"Cat?" Kim asked, blinking nervously.

"Yeah, cat. I thought you were a warrior, had spirit, but as it turns out you're nothing but a feeble kitten."

"Nobody calls me kitten and gets away with it," Kim growled, some of her old self returning.

"Oh yeah? I thought that that old fart counsellor, Willy, did."

"William is a chancellor," Kim bit back.

"And who am I, a passer-by maiden? A servant? A rotten intruder having avoided beheading so far?"

"I'm sorry," Kim said, straightening up and gently disentangling herself from Tegan's grip. "I really am. I must seem foolish, to put my tail between my legs like that at the sight of a door. I am sorry, and you are right. We should try to fight Ashim and Krentz."

"Phew, you had me scared there," Tegan admitted with a smile. "You just seemed to crumble before me from fear. Hey, not that I'm not scared too."

"As am I, scared to the point of bristling in fact." Tegan saw that she really was. "But now I have the sense to try to overcome it. Or lack of sense, as the case may be."

"Good. Shall we go and kick some doctor's butt then?"

"Yeah, let's."

They both took out their guns and made sure they were fully loaded, before setting off down the short corridor.

"Oh, and Tegan?" Kim whispered as they quietly approached the doors.

"Yeah?"

"You're not some rotten intruder. You're my friend. No matter what happens."

"Thanks, you too," Tegan answered, trying to ignore a sudden flush of warmth in her cheeks.

Then they were at the doors.

ooo ooo ooo

Doctor Krentz was frustrated. He had two main jobs to do at the Palace. The one was overseeing the treatments of the Princess; the other was to interrogate prisoners for Chancellor Ashim. Some would probably frown at the odd combination, but then Krentz was not deceiving himself into really believing that there was much difference between the two.

Other people seemed to expect that doctors running interrogations and administering pain during such occasions were cruel and perhaps even inclined to like hurting people. Krentz did not, however consider himself a mindless brute or a sexually deranged person with a taste for sadism.

What really interested him was the human mind and the levels of control it had over the body – and vice versa. When he could cause a grown man to break down in whimpers within minutes and tell whatever they needed, it was a victory for his research and his ability to understand the interaction between body and mind. The sooner they broke, the better he had understood their individual psyche and physiology.

In fact, doctor Krentz liked even more to soothe and treat his patients afterwards, also achieving as rapid recuperation as at all possible. Again, this was a victory for his studies and even helped him overcome any twang of guilt that he could otherwise develop.

It was ironic that most of his subjects had been presented to him in order to extract confessions that sent them to the executioner soon after, thus preventing a full recuperation. Some, he knew, were actually saved from the executioner's table by the revelations extracted by the interrogator.

This, truly, was a victory.

He was also fascinated by his works with princess Kimoto. It was his first ever half human patient, and the continuous attempts at altering her mind into something that would fit, had been a real challenge. It was intriguing how close they had been on several occasions, but each time the feline broke through, shoving away any and all human traits from her mind and fighting them as a mere predator and not even the highly intelligent mind of the sheerar species.

But now he would soon loose this opportunity to study cross breed mentality, not to mention his continuous attempts at altering it. He would be given one last attempt at it, he knew, but he also had a very clear feeling that he would still fail.

Right now, however, his biggest concern was the patient before him. The man known only as the Doctor.

Well, man was not the term. His cardiovascular system and respiratory system were not human, nor were several readings of his brain patterns. No, whatever he looked like, he was not human.

It had been more than three years since he last failed at extracting information from an unwilling subject, but this one had eluded him. The drugs had not worked and now he seemed comatose. All this, before having given one single bit of information! Frustrating.

And chancellor Ashim, that primitive ambitious ape. Krentz knew fully well that the treatments and several of the quite secret interrogations did not happen for any other reason than the furthering of Ashim's goals. As long as Krentz was allowed his studies and the resources spent on bringing subjects back on their feet again, this was an acceptable disadvantage.

Working in the Imperial Palace, it was also not as if Krentz had much say in the matter. All that mattered here was the Code. Bushido this and millennia-old tradition that. Krentz was disgusted by it and found that it halted development on Honshu II rather than accentuating it. But then, he knew that several of his own ideas had been set into action during the last few years, simply because they were issued from within the Palace. And that was fairly good.

The best was the executions. If there was such a thing as a good execution, Krentz believed it to be his model. The subject was given whatever last rites he or she wished for and then calmly and without any fuss sedated. Then a team of surgeons took out all the organs and tissue that could be used for transplants before the executioner flipped the switch that stopped the life-support systems. Sometimes, as when a heart was removed, this was more of a ritual than anything else.

In dying, these people supplied others with a chance to live. Krentz was rather proud of this idea and found that it was the best he could do as a doctor in a world that insisted on condoning something as profoundly primitive as the death penalty.

One prisoner, some seven years ago, had even taken the chance to thank Krentz for the idea while speaking his final words before being put to sleep. That memory always gave the doctor a strange, painful feeling somewhere in the chest. And excess moisture in the eyes…

As did the patient before him!

"Come on, wake up! You should be conscious for all the readings!" he yelled at the prone form before him, then smiled at himself. How ridiculous. Since when had comatose people reacted to frustrated yelling? Not counting bad movie flicks.

"Hnnnrrrrr…"

The Doctor was responding! His eyelids fluttered, but remained closed. The fingers on his one hand flexed and his head lolled and not for the first time, Krentz wondered if coma truly was the proper diagnosis here.

"Stay with me, Doctor," Krentz said intensely, replacing a mask with oxygen over the Doctor's nose and mouth. "Just relax, you're quite safe for now. Breathe deep. Breathe deep."

He cast a glance at the electroencephalogram, but found that the readings were much the same as before the Doctor had responded. Odd. But this oddity could and would have to wait as Krentz tried to persuade the Doctor's weak consciousness to come back.

"Listen to my voice, Doctor," Krentz continued in a soothing tone. "Listen to me. Follow the sound of the voice and come towards it. You may relax, you are safe here."

"Safe?" a familiar voice spat behind him. "What? From you?"

Krentz, who had almost jumped out of his skin at the sound, whirled around and stood face to face with Princess Kimoto Takita and a Caucasian woman whom he didn't know. They both held electro guns and they both had them trained on him, but that was not the real worry here. The real worry was the expression on the Princess' face: Wide eyes, ears flat against the skull and teeth bared; it was obvious that she was a scared as any cat.

"Your highness," he said, still in a calm voice. "You startled me. I was not expecting you."

"I just bet you weren't," the feline growled as she grabbed his shoulder and roughly pushed him away from the bed, heading towards the Doctor without ever loosing the aim at Krentz.

The Doctor, earlier an image of the upper class Edwardian cricketer, was lying on the bed with only his trousers and a blanket covering him. His body was pale and angry red marks clearly spoke a language that Kim knew only too well. As the two women gazed at him, he opened his eyes just a little and tried to focus on them.

"Tegan?" he rattled, his voice muffled both by the oxygen mask and his weak condition. "Kim? You shouldn't have. It's not safe here."

"I bloody well know that!" Kim replied, awkwardly waving the gun at Krentz and wondering what kind of help the Doctor needed. "Been here before, you know. This piece of human garbage is my personal physician. What did he do to you? The usual?"

"I am unfamiliar with the usual procedure here," the Doctor said, plucking off the mask and scratching his temple where more red marks spoke volumes. "Interrogation, I'd say. And performed by an expert. Sadly I was of little help to him and his master, the honourable Ashim."

"Doctor? How are you? Can we get out of here?" Tegan asked, only just stopping herself from adding 'please'.

"I'm fine, just a little tired," the Doctor replied, sitting up on the bed and shaking his head as if to clear it. "Yes, we can get out of here in just a moment. I need to recover just a bit more. I abandoned consciousness in favour of trance when things started to turn nasty. I'll just need a few moments to readjust."

"You sick, twisted bastard!" Kim yelled in an increasing scream, turning towards Krentz and slapping him across his face with the side of the gun, sending him sideways with spatters of blood flying through the air. "You are worse than anything else," she went on, abandoning the gun and picking him up from the floor, holding him by the lapels of his lab coat and striking him twice in the abdomen, causing him to exhale violently and then just collapse to the floor, retching and gasping for air.

Kim just stood there, hugging herself and seemingly paralyzed. It had all happened so fast that neither the Doctor nor Tegan had been able to say anything, much less stop it, and now they watched as Kim sank onto her knees, sobbing.

"I think our friend needs a hand more than I do," the Doctor suggested gently. Tegan nodded and went over to the Princess, putting a hand on her shoulder, ignoring the pale and gasping Krentz, who was barely conscious.

"It's all right," she soothed. "He can't hurt you now. We're leaving."

"He shouldn't be able to hurt anyone," Kim sobbed, angrily wiping tears from her face. "He is a tame psychopath on a pay roll. Have you seen the images?"

Tegan looked up as Kim vaguely gestured toward the wall and now she saw the images. She hadn't noticed before, having focused on the Doctor, but now it made her blood run cold. She quickly turned back towards her friend.

"He does that only to taunt me," Kim explained, fighting to regain control. "He thinks he can change my mind like others change computer programmes. Using… Using… Doing what he does."

"Come on," Tegan gently urged. "He hasn't succeeded so far, has he? And now he'll not get the chance."

"No, you're right," Kim muttered, finally getting up again. "He won't. And he won't hurt anybody for some time. I just… The Doctor is such a nice person and to think that this… What he did to him…"

"Thank you for the kind words," the Doctor said with a weak smile from his bed. He had picked up the oxygen mask again and was inhaling long, deep breaths of oxygen. "But you need not worry. I am able to mentally shut down, as you may call it, and I did as soon as his started his ministrations. I barely felt a thing."

"But he tried, didn't he?" Kim asked, walking over to a sink and starting to fill a cup with water.

"Yes," the Doctor said quietly. "Yes, he did."

"And he will continue to do so, if we don't stop him once and for all," she continued, handing the cup of water to the Doctor, who removed the mask and drank it.

"And what, your highness, would you propose that we do?"

"Stop him," Kim said in a flat voice.

"How?"

"Kill him," Kim suggested.

"Are you sure about that?"

Kim looked at the Doctor, who returned her scrutiny with unblinking blue eyes. Then she bent down, picking up the gun from the floor, wincing as she moved her injured arm and briefly looking at the weapon before tossing it onto a nearby table.

"These guns are as unlikely as anything else to kill," she murmured, her voice still having that icy tone. "But I would be surprised if this place doesn't hold something a little more efficient."

She went over to the biggest table, the one between another bed and a chair with straps on the armrests. The chair was still moist from somebody's sweat and the straps a bit askew as if somebody had been fighting against them. Kim glared at it, then stared back at the Doctor with a strange look in her emerald eyes.

"You didn't pass out right away, did you?"

"Ah, no," he admitted. "No, I didn't."

Tegan gasped and looked back at the Doctor. Knowing him, she was really not surprised at his tendency to understate whatever injuries or suffering he experienced, but still she had hoped that he had been spared of this torture. Well, obviously not.

Kim continued to examine the big table, studying the machine with the cables with an air of indifference and then continuing to the drugs, picking up a rather big syringe. Picking her way between different bottles with rubber tops, she decided on one with a blue label and filled the syringe with the milky white contents of it. Then she turned towards Krentz, who was still lying on the floor, a pool of blood and spittle in front of him.

"This," she said quietly as she approached him, "may sting."

"I asked you a question before," the Doctor broke in, making Kim look up from her prey. "Are you sure about that?"

"This is what they usually use to put me under for a while," Kim replied in the same flat tone as before. "But the syringe here contains some twenty or thirty times what they use. It will be a more merciful death than he deserves, but I don't think I could do it using the… Using electricity."

"And that's what you are going to do?" the Doctor asked, removing the mask again so that his soothing voice was not hindered by it. "Kill him?"

"He is vermin," she said, looking down at the prone form, fidgeting with the syringe. "He should be exterminated."

"No!" the Doctor exclaimed. Then, with a little more composure, he continued: "I disagree. The last time I heard somebody insist on exterminating, they were wrong. And so are you."

"But he deserves it."

"Does he? Truly? Why?"

"He is evil!"

"Come now, Kim," the Doctor admonished in a light tone. "Surely you are part of an advanced society, you should be well above that medieval terminology of good and evil."

"Medieval, but that's just what this society is," Kim said defiantly. "We could be advanced; we could be a beacon in the galaxy, a model of a good and free lifestyle. But we just sit here, stuck in the medieval quagmire of bushido, codes and ideals dating back so far that even in centuries it is quite a count."

"Ah, yes, but is that the society of the imperial family or that of Honshu II?"

"How in the blazes should I know that? I've never been outside these walls for long enough to find out, now have I?"

"Let's, just for the moment, pretend that the common honshuan leads a nice, tranquil life where freedom of choice and equal rights are the order of the day. That they can educate themselves, make families and move as they please. Let's pretend that the nobility lives by the old codes so as to set an example of stoicism, unrequited from commoners. Let's, just for the moment, pretend that life within the ruling families is stern so that the common life doesn't have to be."

"You are starting to sound like my father," Kim warned, popping the cap over the syringe needle on and off as she spoke.

"Perhaps your father is sometimes right," the Doctor suggested. "And if he is the true ruler of this place, perhaps he needs such people as Krentz here. Your killing him will only have him replaced by another. You are staring yourself blind on the symptom rather than the disease."

"He's right," Tegan said, having kept quiet so far. "You're a warrior, Kim, but you are not a murderer. I saw you when Hatfield died."

"Hatfield?" the Doctor enquired, taking another breath of oxygen and then bending down to fasten his shoelaces.

"He…" Kim faltered, then threw the syringe to the floor, breaking it and spilling the milky liquid all over the sterile tiles. "He was a servant, and an informant of Ashim's. I… I just tried to use my gift… He died…"

"But it was an accident," Tegan interjected. "She just tried to probe his mind, but then he had a seizure and just died."

"You're right, Doctor." Kim said quietly, briefly looking defeated, but then raising her head and looking at him with determination. "Let's get out of here while we still can. I believe it would be possible to find that engineer and that cable of yours. She said several days, but that was to accommodate your entire list. A cable, I suspect, would not take long."

"There's a good girl," the Doctor beamed and jumped off of the bed, tossing the oxygen mask aside. "I knew it all along. Tegan is right, you may be a fighter, but you're no assassin."

"No, you're right. I would have been angry with myself for decades if I'd done it," Kim admitted. "But try as I may, I am not regretting that I punched him. He'll have a sore tummy for some time."

"Violence is never the solution," the Doctor admonished, quickly slipping on his shirt and his sweater from the table.

"No, but it sometimes helps," Tegan added with a wry grin.

"Yeah, it does. It made me feel just a little better," Kim said, bending over to pick up the gun from the floor. "But the Doctor is right. No more killings."

"He's often right," Tegan said, now smiling widely. "It's an annoying habit of his."

"Not this time, though!"

They all turned towards the door where six armed samurai stood, aiming their very real rifles at the three of them and almost but not quite hiding the man who had spoken.

Chancellor Ashim!

ooo ooo ooo

_To be continued…_


	12. No Room to Swing a Cat Part 12

**No Room to Swing a Cat**

_The Doctor and Tegan Jovanka are property of the BBC – you know the drill. Kimoto Takita and most everybody else are my creations!_

_Just as the Doctor, Tegan and Kim are ready to leave, climax occurs with the unexpected – and unwelcome – arrival of Chancellor Ashim and a horde of armed guards. What can save our heroes now?_

_Warning: Graphic torture ahead!_

**Part twelve**

Kim jumped forwards like a coiled spring released, rolling in order to raise her gun and shoot towards the guards, but only managing to land in a heap as several electric shots hit her before she could get a clear aim. Her inhuman wail as the electricity surged through her made both the Doctor and Tegan wince.

"Was that really necessary?" the Doctor asked quietly.

"Quite," chancellor Ashim said as he marched into the room, escorted by several more armed guards. Their weapons were trained on the Doctor and on Tegan, who was now cursing having put her electro gun in her belt. Not that it seemingly would have made much difference…

Two of the samurai knelt next to doctor Krentz and made quick assessment of his condition, and then they scooped him up, placing him onto the bed that the Doctor had just abandoned where he lay almost still, moaning quietly.

"He may have a small fracture in his cheekbone, Ashim-sama," the one samurai said as the other found an ice-pack and placed it against the man's swelling face. "But other than that, he has suffered no grave injury."

"Not yet," Ashim observed coolly. "Secure the prisoners and put her highness onto that other bed."

"N-no," Kim stuttered, fighting to get up from the floor, her eyes wide with fear. "I had treatments just yesterday. It's not time yet. I… I can go upstairs again, forget the matter. Completely."

"Obviously her highness' condition has been worsened by the dangerous influence of these strangers," Ashim insisted, gesturing for the samurai to continue. "We need to set right whatever damage their interference may have caused. Strap her to the bed, we wouldn't want her to accidentally hurt herself."

"No! Please, no!" Kim whimpered and almost turned to jelly in the strong hands of the two samurai who effortlessly lifted her onto the bed. She tried to get up, still weakened from the low dosage of electric shock she had received and there were fresh spots of blood on her side, but they easily forced her down and started to secure insulated leather straps with electrodes several places around her arms, legs and torso. "Please, uncle Ashim-sama. Please-please-please…"

Ashim ignored it and turned to look at the Doctor and Tegan with a stern expression, finding that the guards had already placed them both in solid – and non-conductive – plastic cuffs.

"You seem to have recovered quite well," he observed, nodding to the Doctor. "Almost as if you were doing what you did on purpose. Trying to escape my questions, hmm?"

"Why are you insisting on this?" the Doctor asked furiously over the sobs from the feline. "Look at her, she's in tatters already, you needn't do any of that unconscionable torture to make her conform. Stop it, I beg of you."

"You don't like to witness the ministrations of my otherwise excellent doctor Krentz, hmm?" Ashim smiled. "Well, perhaps it's because you're not human after all. But I suppose that this little lady here is quite human, yes?"

"I am, thank you very much," Tegan said, glaring at him. "Which is a lot more than I can say for you, you bastard!"

"Human, indeed," Ashim grinned, and then wiped any trace of mirth from his face. "Put her in the big chair and have this Doctor secured firmly into another. I am sure that a humanitarian such as our guest here will not just escape into some state of unconsciousness when it is his friend who is at the receiving end rather than himself. And," he added with spite, quieting the Doctor with a warning gesture, "if he should chose to do so, we will simply continue the ministrations until he finds it acceptable to rejoin us."

"You are a maniac," the Doctor observed quietly. "But very well, I shall –"

"Silence him!" Ashim barked, immediately obeyed by a samurai who forced a plastic gag into the Doctor's mouth. "Just to make sure, you understand precisely what predicament, you and your friend have gotten yourselves into here, I will make a small demonstration before we even contemplate discussing the matter at hand. Consider it a small reprieve because of your former stubbornness!"

"You're insane!" Tegan exclaimed, trying without any luck what so ever to free herself from the bindings to the chair. "You can't do this!"

"Can't I?" the Chancellor asked silkily, suddenly reminding Tegan of other, earlier megalomaniacs, those people who seemed repeatedly to pop up wherever the Doctor and his companions went, trying to force their will onto other people. Yes, she knew that arrogance only too well, as she had seen it before. And as she helplessly watched one of the guards, not a samurai, attach several electrodes onto her body, she knew without a trace of doubt that he both could and would do as he said.

"After this small demonstration, I shall ask you again, Doctor, what your business is here," Ashim continued smoothly. "And you shall answer, because failing to do so will be, hmm, most unpleasant for the young lady. I am sure you understand the implications here."

"Let them go, please," Kim's voice broke through. "Please. I'll do whatever you ask of me. I'll even marry Nobunaga without any further ado. Please, I promise. They are no threat to you."

"You are right, Princess, they are not," Ashim said, turning towards the feline and calmly walking over to her. "Because they are in my power as are you. I don't know what scheme the three of you have been working on, nor do I care particularly much. But it ends here. You may have managed to take Krentz out of operation, but I assure you that I personally know the drugs, the currents and the procedures as if I'd performed them myself many times."

"You probably take pleasure in watching the tapes, over and over again," Kim spat, giving up on begging the chancellor for anything.

"And I know your limits, as the good doctor has educated me many times about them," Ashim went on, picking up several cables next to the bed and fastening them to plugs on the straps and attaching two to the feline's temples. "In fact, I am quite capable of administering your next and final treatment, the one finishing this entire project," he added, turning to search for a particular bottle on the table and starting to fill a syringe from it.

"Final?" Kim asked as her ears flattened once again. "What do you mean? How can you be so sure? Uncle, please, tell me what you're doing. Please."

"Very well," Ashim conceded, clicking bubbles out of the fluid in the syringe, studying it against the light from an overhead lamp. "Count Matsudaira Nobunaga is, as you well know, a person who treasures beauty. He has agreed to marry you because of your lineage and beauty, certainly not because of your spirit. One might add that your spirit, complex as it is, is really not a part of the bargain."

"I don't understand…" Kim whispered, staring at him as he calmly wiped the crook of her elbow with an alcohol swab.

"No, off course not, my Princess, my niece. We, Doctor Krentz and I, have tried for so long to subdue your rebellious personality, all for naught. Even now, after the last, most intense series of treatments, you grasp onto the first opportunity you get, teaming up with foreign intruders, even aliens, to run away from home like some spoiled brat. Again, I might add."

"What are you doing to me?" Kim asked hoarsely as the tip of the needle pierced her skin.

"Krentz is a skilled man," Ashim said peacefully, skillfullyinjecting the liquid into a vein. "When he says that you can only withstand so much before succumbing into, ah, I believe the term is catatonia, then I am sure he knows what he is talking about. I believe, however, that this is an acceptable price to pay for assuring this marriage with the Count."

"Christ, you're out of it!" Tegan yelled, having heard it all. "You sick bastard!"

"You c-cant," Kim whispered, her eyelids drooping. "This is… No… You can't do this. I'm…"

"Oh, don't worry, my Princess," the chancellor said, pulling out the needle and wiping a single drop of blood away from her arm. "You won't feel a thing. After the treatment, anyway. Then it will be all over."

"Lord Ashim-sama?" the muffled words came from the bed occupied by Krentz, who was fighting to sit up supported by a guard, his face swollen but his eyes clear with determination. "I think you should leave the actual treatments to me, after all, I am her highness' doctor. I am familiar with her by now, and I'll just need a few moments to gather myself, then I can take care of it if you wish so, Ashim-sama."

"Oh, that would be perfect," Ashim said. "You take care now, Doctor Krentz. I have administered the primary drug myself, so she'll be ready for your ministrations in a few moments. Are you sure you can handle it?"

"I'll apply a local anaesthetic to my bruise," Krentz replied. "As well as something for the swelling. I don't think there's any fracture, so it shouldn't be a problem. By the time the drugs are having their effect, I can apply the treatments if you wish, Ashim-sama."

"Good, see to it then," Ashim said, leaving the bedside of Kim, who was quietly mouthing unclear words. It could be the word 'no', over and over again, but no sound passed her lips.

Ashim came over to the chair where Tegan was fixed and stared at her. His eyes were curious, but also very cold.

"Who are you then?" he asked, fidgeting with some controls on the apparatus next to the chair. "To tell off an Imperial Chancellor like that? Somebody must not have taught you any manners."

"My name is Tegan Jovanka and you are a sick, perverted – EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

The chancellor had turned a knob on the apparatus and the effect was instant. Tegan's body arched and she involuntarily let out a screech of pain as the currents tore through her body. Her eyes were almost popping out of her skull and she was in so much pain that nothing else really mattered.

The chancellor briefly stood observing her rigid body, rubbing his chin and ignoring the Doctor's attempts at breaking free from his bonds, obviously trying to say something, his eyes flaring with anger at the scene before him.

"That," he said as he switched off the electricity, "was for addressing me in such a fashion as to arouse my anger. And this is the demonstration, I offered the Doctor."

Before Tegan had a chance to object, the currents once again soared through her, causing her to see nothing but little explosions of light and feeling as if her entire form was ablaze with pain. At least this time she didn't scream, but that was because she had no excess breath to do so.

The Doctor once again struggled against his bonds and without switching off the electricity, Ashim quietly walked over to him and removed the plastic gag from his mouth.

"Was there something you wanted?" he asked, ignoring the quiet hum of the electric torture behind him.

"Please," the Doctor said with barely contained anger. "Please, Lord Ashim, switch that thing off and I'll tell you whatever you wish to know. I beg of you, please!"

"Very well." Ashim made a gesture to a samurai, who stepped forwards and switched off the machine. Tegan slumped in the chair, not even capable of looking up as she sucked air into her tormented lungs, rasping at each careful breath of sweet, precious air and trying to fight down the nausea.

"What do you wish to know?" the Doctor asked, defeated.

"Where are you from?" Ashim asked.

"Gallifrey."

"Gallifrey?" Ashim repeated. "I am unfamiliar with that place. Where is it? Oh, and do address me according to rank, thank you."

"It is a planet very far from here, Ashim-sama," the Doctor breathed, slumping as if having shared Tegan's pain. "There is no official contact between Gallifrey and your world."

"I see. Well, we'll address this here Gallifrey later," Ashim shrugged. "Right now I'd like to know why you and your friend are here. Or is she your lover?"

"Friend, travelling companion," the Doctor said, not noticing the brief glimpse as Tegan looked up at him with wary eyes. "We are here by accident. My ship made an emergency landing here, Ashim-sama."

"But we have heard of no such landing," Ashim objected. "Surely a space craft would have been noticed. Explain this."

"My craft is very small to an outside viewer," the Doctor confessed. "It doesn't actually land. It materializes, and is currently –"

"Ashim-sama," Krentz' voice broke in. "I am sorry to interrupt your interrogation, but how much did you give the Princess?"

"How much?" Ashim asked in an irritated voice. "Oh, how much of the initiate drug? Just a moment."

Ashim left the Doctor without the gag and went over to Krentz, making a small gesture, unseen by the doctor to some of the samurai. Then he took up the bottle and looked appreciatively at it.

"I believe I gave her eleven point five CCs of this, intravenously," he declared.

"Excuse me, Ashim-sama," Krentz said, going pale. "But her dosage is at four point five to six and you have not used all the complementary drugs. Your pure dosage is far exceeding her limitations. Her system is too fragile for such concentrations, even more so without the drip set up, and especially as nobody seems to have tended her wounds, which really should be done before starting the treatment. Are you certain about this?"

"Are you suggesting that I don't know my own measures, Krentz?" Ashim snarled. "Yes, I am sure. Remember that talk we had, you explained about the likely outcome of a doubling of the drug and effect. Well, that is the outcome I wish to produce. Now get on with it."

"But Ashim-sama, this may kill her!" Krentz protested. "Please let me administer an antidote, if we are lucky, we may still prevent any permanent damage. Also, her wounds should be dressed."

"You just don't understand, do you," Ashim scalded, gesturing at the samurai who raised their rifles. "You have been a magnificent doctor and I do admire your work, but when the Princess knocked you over, you were injured such as to loose your faculties," Ashim explained to the surprised doctor. "You proceeded to administer treatments and, be it vengeance or just because of your injuries, you went too far. By the time I got here with my trusted men, we were too late to save her and unless you proceed as you're told now, we were forced to shoot you to stop you. Do I make myself clear?"

"The Emperor will have my head for this," Krentz said, terror evident in his face. "And yours. If you would have to shoot me to stop me, then you may as well do it now, for I will do your interrogations to hinder incompetent people from doing it, and I will commence treatments to alter the sheerar female in order to learn more, but I will not take part in any action that deliberately causes her to worsen considerably or even die."

"It almost seems as if you are defying a direct order," Ashim tutted. "You really shouldn't try to keep up any appearances. You appreciate your job, and you do not have to pretend to me that you don't. Those soft ideas of yours, presented to better your outward appearances, do not fool me. I have been present at some of the Krentz-executions, they are a real treat, you know. All that friendly hospital staff and a patient, treated as if from imperial lineage? They should be hung, like the scum that they are."

"In death, they help others to live," Krentz said in a husky voice. "That's the idea."

"People die," Ashim declared. "And you have sent many to their deaths. After all, you are the best interrogator in the Palace."

"I send but the guilty ones to meet their destiny," Krentz spat. "It is part of the job to know the difference between confession and lying to avoid pain. And I am seriously considering that you, Lord Ashim, should have the honour next time. It seems that you worry less about the imperial family than the furthering of your own schemes."

"And this is new to you? You fool nobody, doctor. But very well, are you with me or not?"

"I have taken a vow of obedience to the Throne of Honshu II," Krentz declared, straightening up into his full, considerable height. "And it seems to me, obeying you would be acting against this vow!"

"As you wish," Ashim shrugged and gave a signal to two of the samurai behind him.

"TAKITAAA!" Krentz bellowed, perhaps more as a gesture of spite towards Ashim than anything else, but as a few choice bullets ripped through his head and chest, sending him flailing backwards in a spray of blood, it made Kim stir on the bed and open her eyes.

Tegan screamed in terror as Doctor Krentz collapsed against the wall like a rag doll, and the Doctor, who had not dared to intervene, hoping that it would not end like this, turned his head away in disgust. There was no doubt that Krentz was dead even before his body came to rest on the floor.

"Please…" Kim's voice rattled from her bed, making everybody turn to look at her. "Uncle Ashim, please. D-don't do this. I… I can't accept… You mustn't…"

"Keep an eye on the two strangers," Ashim ordered, himself proceeding towards Kim without answering her words. He briefly studied her face and her glazed, unseeing eyes, and then he turned to the machines on the table, noting the readout of blood pressure and heart rate.

"D-don't…" Kim's slurred voice begged again. "Pl-please…"

With a calm as if it was a lab rat on the bed rather than a fellow sentient being, Ashim turned a few dials and then threw a switch.

She didn't even scream. Her body just arched as currents surged through her. Her laboured breathing sounded like a terrible noise and it was obvious that she had immediately soiled herself. Apparently the machine administered a pattern of shocks as she collapsed onto the mattress and then went rigid again, again and again.

"You are the most sick and twisted bastard I have met," Tegan spat. "And I've seen a few sick puppies in my time!"

"Come now, I thought I had taught you a lesson all ready," Ashim said, coming over. "Need I do so again?"

"There's nothing I can say that'll change what you do, now is there?" Tegan hissed.

"No, not really," Ashim conceded. "Perhaps another short demonstration is needed before I resume questioning the Doctor."

"Oh damn!" Tegan muttered, bracing herself from the inevitable.

"You don't have to," the Doctor said. "I'll tell you what you want to know."

"But I feel better if we have things a bit more straightened out," Ashim replied gently, reaching for the switch. "I fact, I… ah…"

Much to everybody's surprise, chancellor Ashim suddenly collapsed to the floor, immediately followed by every last one of the samurai and guards.

"How do you turn that thing off?" an unfamiliar voice rang through the room as an elderly gentleman in a kimono rushed in, hurrying towards the machine next to Kim, and followed by several guards who still had their electro guns trained at the fallen men.

"The dark knob, top left, next to the meter," the Doctor yelled. "Quickly, it's too high!"

The man turned the switch off and then tore the electrodes from the now prone form of Kim. He removed the straps as his men did the same to Tegan and the Doctor and then he just stood there, gingerly reaching for her bloody side and caressing her pale face, and weeping quietly over her.

"My kitten, how could I allow this? I didn't know… I didn't know…"

"Are you all right, Tegan?" the Doctor asked with a dark expression, barely taking any notice of the unconscious Chancellor on the floor next to her.

"I'm fine, just a little shaken," Tegan assured him. "But she's not."

"Allow me," the Doctor said grimly as he walked over to the bed.

"Are you a doctor?" the man asked as he let go of Kim.

"Ah, yes. As a matter of fact, I am THE Doctor," he assured him. Then he bent over the unconscious feline and made a brief examination.

"This was what they gave her," Tegan came over, brandishing the bottle from which Kim had been injected. The Doctor took it and sniffed the container, then he made a face, put it down and rummaged through the assembly of bottles and phials until he retrieved one with a satisfied grunt. Giving Kim a small injection with it, he the proceeded to place his hand on her forehead.

"Don't let it be too late…" the newly arrived man whispered, then he looked at Tegan and saw the raw marks on her wrists. "Oh no, not you also?"

"I've been through worse," Tegan assured him, beckoning him away from the Doctor as not to disturb him. "But who are you? The cavalry, arriving at the last possible moment?"

"I am Chancellor William," the man introduced himself. "I was only just briefed by Tetsu-san, a samurai loyal to the throne, who came to me to report that all was not as it seemed under the control of my esteemed colleague, Ashim. I must say, this was not what I expected from him."

"He's a psychopath!" Tegan declared. "A nut."

"I knew, the ki- erh, the Princess was receiving treatments, even electroshock therapy, but it was not until moments ago that I knew she was not sedated during the procedures. And now, as I look at… This…" He gestured vaguely at the disturbing images on the wall. "I have been a fool. For all I know, she was never even truly ill."

"She seemed quite okay to me," Tegan said. "Only when we came here, she started to break down. And I can't say that I blame her. First shot at, then this… Chamber."

"I have been a fool. If I were a bit braver, I would succumb to seppuku, but I am a coward as well as a fool."

"What's seppuku?" Tegan asked.

"Never mind, just a tradition. Another tradition from times bygone, but maintained within the palaces of Honshu II." He sighed. "But tell me, do you think that your friend can help her?"

"I don't know, Tegan admitted, looking over at the Doctor, who was standing quietly, his brow furrowed and his bearing concentrated as he held Kim's head between the palms of his hands. "But if anybody can, he has a good chance."

"I am not a religious man," Chancellor William said quietly. "But I shall light many candles at the shrine tonight if he succeeds."

"How about just helping her out instead?" Tegan asked, just as quietly.

"I could never do that," the man said, taken somewhat aback. "The Emperor-"

"The Emperor is a conservative old fart who may or may not be a good ruler," Tegan interrupted. "He has a large family and lots of daughters, he will not need Kim. In fact, without all this brainwashing of Ashim's, neither will Count Matsu-something. Nobody will be happy if she gets to stay here."

"But…"

"Hey, would you listen to me for once? Nobody around here ever seems to listen to anyone," Tegan hissed, then briefly looked at the chancellor.

"Very well, Miss, I shall listen," William said, bowing ever so slightly.

"Right…" Tegan hesitated, casting a sidelong glance at the Doctor who was seemingly still in some sort of trance with Kim. "Well…"

"Not many intruders get any chance at having the ear of an imperial chancellor," William admonished her lightly. "I was not of the impression that you were easily rendered speechless."

"Right then," Tegan said decisively. "Kim is to marry that count because she is a nuisance when staying here, right? And he's an old friend of the Emperor and very important and all that, yeah?"

"That is so," William nodded.

"But Kim doesn't want to be locked up in some castle far away from everything, which was going to happen because she was seemingly somewhat insane, am I right?"

"Yes. Go on."

"But now you have, in the nick of time I might add, discovered that Kim is no more a nut than most everybody here, less than some in fact. Will that prevent the wedding?"

"Most likely not, no. The Emperor would loose face if going back on his promise to count Matsudaira Nobunaga."

"So no matter what, even in the light of Ashim's treason, she will still be married off to him?"

"Probably, yes."

"But you like her, don't you?"

"Why…" Tegan's straight forward question seemed to take the Chancellor by surprise, but he rapidly regained his composure. "Yes, I do."

"I could tell from the way you reacted. It's all right, I like her too."

"Well…"

"So if you really want to help her," Tegan went on. "You help us and her out of here."

"But… I am not sure I could do that."

"What other options are there?"

Chancellor William studied Tegan's open face for a moment, then he seemed to reach a decision as he clapped his hands together and suddenly ushered his guard to leave the room, bringing all of the prisoners to the prison dungeon of the palace. The official one by the sound of it.

"Your wisdom surpasses your years and you have persuaded me," William said. "I will allow the two of you to leave and to bring the Princess, should she be able to. But you must allow for a small bit of cowardice on my part."

"How's that?"

"I will demand that you leave at once, as soon as you can. I shall then report your absence after a while, allowing you to make good your escape."

"How does that make you a coward?"

"Because I can claim that Kimoto left with you due to her condition and that I did not suspect you to be able to leave the premises. Are you able to do that? Soon?"

"We are as soon as the engineer has supplied a certain cable," the Doctor's voice broke in.

"Doctor!" Tegan exclaimed, coming over. "How is she? Will she be all right?"

"She's resting now," the Doctor said in a tired voice. "If I am to be certain that she's all right, I'll need to run a few tests onboard the TARDIS. From what Krentz said, I am assuming that the proper treatment, if one can talk of such one, required other drugs along with this one – the complementary drugs he spoke of. Perhaps this has altered or even lessened the effects. It is her fortune that Ashim is as bad at being a doctor as he is as a chancellor."

"What will happen to Ashim now?" Tegan asked Chancellor William as two men helped the Doctor to load Kim onto a gurney – the same as the one, they had brought the Doctor on.

"I will have him placed before the imperial court, charged with treason. Tetsu-san's testimony would suffice to place him in serious trouble."

"Will he be…"

"Executed? I don't know," William said, bowing his head. "I am considering giving him a chance to obey the old codes and avoid the shame of trial. If, however, he declines this, he still may not be executed. Without Kitten's testimony, I am not sure an imperial Chancellor can be proven guilty of those crimes. Remember he has only killed members of staff, and even so, it will be his words against mine and Tetsu-san's. Tetsu, however brave, is but a samurai."

"I thought that samurai were very important and that their word carried weight," Tegan said.

"They are, it does," William nodded, then looking towards the gurney with Kim on it. "But against an imperial Chancellor of high esteem and even of imperial blood, I just don't know. But now I see that you are ready to leave. Miss Jovanka, could I humbly ask you a favour?"

"Sure."

"Tell Kitten that I am sorry," he muttered clumsily. "I may have been harsh to her at times, but I had no idea about this. I believed Ashim and Krentz. We all did. Tell her that I love her and that I wish her well. Would you do that for an old fool, Miss Jovanka?"

"Yeah," Tegan replied. "I will. I promise."

"Thank you. Now, Doctor, Miss Jovanka, please go. I shall provide you with as much time as I can, but don't linger. And if you are accosted by guards, I have no power to help you."

"Domo arigato, William-sama," the Doctor said, briefly stopping to shake his hand. "I appreciate it. We all do."

"Now go."

"Yes. Good bye."

The Doctor and Tegan went through the door, pushing the gurney in front of them and disappeared out of sight from the old chancellor as the double doors closed behind them.

He stood, staring towards the doors as if following them still with his mind's eye for a long time before he finally turned towards the unconscious men on the floor and started to bark orders to his own men.

ooo ooo ooo

_To be concluded…_


	13. No Room to Swing a Cat Epilogue

**No Room to Swing a Cat**

_The Doctor and Tegan Jovanka are property of the BBC – you know the drill. Kimoto Takita and most everybody else are my creations!_

_The Doctor, Tegan and Kim have been freed from the clutches of the wicked Chancellor Ashim – but what will happen now?_

**Part thirteen – an elongated epilogue**

ooo ooo ooo

"We've been lucky!"

The words, spoken with anything but happiness, were said by Tegan Jovanka as she came into the room in the TARDIS which she had lately, for lack of any better name for it, dubbed 'sick bay' in her mind.

"Yes, we have," the Doctor replied, absentmindedly as he stood bent over Kim's prone form on the bed, examining her via some Gallifreyan piece of incomprehensible medical equipment.

"Well, we made it this far. And everybody is still alive," Tegan muttered.

"Yes."

"Will she recover?"

"Hmmm," the Doctor murmured as he straightened up with a small frown on his brow. "Tegan, I am not sure exactly how to address that question."

"Is she… Well, it's a simple yes or no question," Tegan said, taken aback by the reply.

"Yes, I suppose it is," the Doctor nodded as he put the medical instrument on a table, just next to the bracelet that he had removed from her wrist a little earlier. "But the universe is rarely as simple as that."

"Stop playing games, Doc," Tegan spat angrily. "Hell's teeth, this is neither time nor place for games. Will she be all right or is she a vegetable as Ashim intended?"

"Neither time nor place," the Doctor tutted. "Hmmm, no. But as you may recall, I told you that this young lady does have a certain reputation in times to come."

"So she will recover then?"

"Not entirely, no," the Doctor sighed. "The recent treatments and the events of today have caused permanent damage and I am afraid that even I cannot do very much about it."

"She's… Is she…" Words, for once, failed Tegan Jovanka.

"No, she'll wake up, being the same Kim as you and I have gotten to know, but she will, from time to time, lapse into a state of mental illness. It will cause her life to take some turns every now and again, but there is very little that I can do about it. Sheerar-human hybrids are prone to this kind of mental instability and the treatments have affected her natural predisposition for this."

"What you are saying is that she's going to go nuts from time to time?" Tegan exclaimed.

"Ah, I would not have put it as crudely as that, but yes, in a sense."

"Does she know?"

"She probably does have an idea," the Doctor nodded as he went to pour a glass of water. "But that the drugs and electroshock therapy has pushed her towards it may be new to her. And quite frankly, I see no reason to tell her."

"Why ever not?" Tegan had immediately taken on her regular Tegan the she-wolf attitude as she came over to the bed. "If it was me, I'd bloody well want to know!"

"If it were you, yes," the Doctor agreed, also coming over. "But you must trust me on this one. I am, as they say, a bit in the know."

"Right, and I'm just a bit in the dark," Tegan grumbled.

"Hush now, there's a good girl."

Tegan never really knew if the Doctor was aware how much she detested being addressed like that, but as so many times before, she didn't say anything.

"Hello, Miss Takita?" The Doctor bent over Kim again and gently rubbed her arm as he tried to wake her up. "Hello?"

"Hello…" the coarse reply came as the feline gingerly opened her eyes and squinted at the two. Then she took in the surroundings and gave a start. "Where am I? Where are we? Ouch, my head hurts."

"Here, drink this," the Doctor proffered the glass. "It will do you good."

"What is it? Some kind of medication?"

"Water, actually," the Doctor said amiably. "The best remedy in this part of the universe."

Kim took the glass and drank down every last drop of the water before she looked quizzically at the two others.

"We're out of the palace," Tegan explained before Kim asked. "We're onboard the TARDIS and you should be safe here!"

"How did that come about?" Kim said, suddenly belching some, following it by a giggle. "How perfectly dignified, hmm?"

"Well, we were all in deep sh-"

"We were saved by another chancellor," the Doctor broke in. "Chancellor William, in fact. He apprehended Ashim and allowed us time to leave, bringing you."

"We passed by your chambers up here, and some of the gadgets requested by the Doctor had arrived, including the cable," Tegan added.

"So we went into the TARDIS, I installed the cable and we left Honshu II," the Doctor finished with a flourish.

"We're not on Honshu II anymore?" Kim asked, her eyes widening. "But where are we then?"

"In the vortex, actually," the Doctor replied.

"A sort of in between the real world," Tegan added helpfully. "Do accept that at face value, you'll only regret asking the Doctor as he'll give you a nine-hour lecture that will still leave you completely in the dark."

"A plane existing outside real-space?" Kim asked. "As opposed to hyper space, which is another parallel, rather than an alternate, right?"

"Almost spot on!" the Doctor beamed. "I was unaware that Honshu had any chronometric research worth speaking off."

"They don't," Kim replied with a grin. "I've read it in a sci-fi fanzine."

"A fanzine? I am afraid you have me at a disadvantage here," the Doctor frowned. Then he noticed the odd sound produced as Tegan fought very hard not to laugh out loud. As she spotted the Doctor's confused look, she gave up and howled with mirth.

"It is my distinct impression that you both have me at a disadvantage here," he noted with some consternation.

"In a moment, in a moment…" Kim joined Tegan.

ooo ooo ooo

Somewhat later, Kim's headache had abated almost completely and they had told each other the rest of their remaining stories regarding the events at the imperial palace on Honshu II. Kim was still almost frantic about finally being out of the palace and as far away as this – relatively speaking – was.

More importantly, Tegan and Kim had explained about fanzines to a somewhat puzzled Doctor and Tegan had delivered the message from Chancellor William to Kim, who had taken the information and news about his attitude with quiet dignity.

"How does this match with that non-intervention policy of yours?" she asked the Doctor as she continued to study the steady rise and fall of the TARDIS' central column.

"I guess that this will bring an end to Ashim's role in politics as well as save you from the dullest wedding within twenty galaxies," Tegan added.

"No and yes," the Doctor said. "It will disrupt the wedding plans, but I am not so sure regarding Ashim's part in future politics. He is a very powerful man, and of imperial blood."

"Hah! That doesn't matter unless you're also high on testosterone," Kim growled. "Imperial blood is a boon to males and a bane to females."

"So what do you want to do now?" Tegan asked carefully. Somehow she just knew that Kim was really not the kind of person likely to stay onboard the TARDIS as a companion for long, but what else could she do…

"Hmmm, I may have a plan," Kim replied. "Hey, Doctor. You say this heap of junk can travel in both time and space, yeah?"

"This heap of junk, as you call it," the Doctor huffed, "is a type-40 TARDIS and she can travel to anywhere and anytime within the universe."

"Right, sorry," Kim said. "No offence."

"None taken," The Doctor assured her, not sounding entirely convincing.

"We left Honshu II approximately on Tuesday the 2nd, right?"

"Yes, we did."

"Could you bring me back to the palace on Wednesday the 17th then? Preferably early morning?"

"Why on earth would you want to go back there?" Tegan exclaimed.

"I need to be able to fend for myself," Kim explained. "I need to stand on my own two feet. I need to manage on my own, but I think that I deserve a head start. If I can be at the palace in the early hours on that day, I can leave in style and get the kind of head start that I would prefer."

"Do you have a plan?" Tegan enquired. "Or would you just wing it?"

"Yes and yes," Kim grinned. "So, can you do that, Doc?"

"Off course I can," the Doctor said in a gruff voice, obviously not having forgotten the insult made to his TARDIS just before. "How precisely do you want it?"

"Wednesday, about four in the morning, the south-west wing of the palace."

"I can do that," the Doctor said, nodding with a sudden realisation dawning in his features. He quickly went to the console and started punching keys, almost as if to cover for his reaction, but Tegan had noted his expression.

"So, what's your plan then?" she asked Kim, trying to distract the otherwise quite attentive feline.

"Oh, I think I can get my own vessel at that particular time and place," the sheerar replied, her tail twitching ever so lightly. "Then I too can travel the universe, see the sights and get a bit wiser as the years go by. Perhaps do my own small part in trying to save said universe from itself and other monstrosities. And should I fail, there's always seppuku. I am bound by the codes, after all."

"I've been meaning to ask," Tegan began. "What's –"

"That's it, we have arrived!" the Doctor announced, just as the central column stopped its familiar rhythm. "Wednesday the 17th, at precisely four in the morning, at the Imperial Viewing Suite in the south-west wing of the Imperial Palace."

"This is pretty amazing!" Tegan murmured to Kim, hoping for the Doctor not to hear her. "The Doctor usually has so much trouble getting to the right place and time!"

"Do I detect a hint of pride in your voice, Doctor?" Kim asked with a glint of mirth in her eyes. "Okay, I'm sorry that I called your craft a heap of junk. It is magnificent, really!"

"Thank you," the Doctor bowed his head just a notch, accepting her apology with honour.

"But if we have materialized in the view suite, we will be discovered soon," Kim observed.

"Yes, I am afraid that you do not have much time," the Doctor agreed.

"Oh…"

Suddenly, Kim was looking like a lost puppy – or kitten as it were – as she looked helplessly at the two others.

"I owe you two very much," she began awkwardly. "Tegan, you're great. And Doctor…"

"Hush with that now," the Doctor admonished. "You helped us as well, supplying the cable and a generous hospitality to boot."

"As for the rest," Tegan added lightly. "It's all in a day's job for a TARDIS-crew."

"Will I ever see you two again?" Kim asked quietly.

"Ah, yes," the Doctor admitted. "Yes, there is a distinct possibility that you will. Now, thank you for the cable and the flux coordinators, the crow-bar, the chocolate and the batteries that your engineer also supplied. But you really should be going before some of your father's more zealous guards notice the presence of a police box in the Imperial suite."

"It's been nice," Tegan offered, briefly shaking hands with Kim before being dragged into an embrace by the suddenly very insecure feline.

"It's not just been nice, Tegan," Kim muttered, her tail lashing. "It's been fabulous. Without you –"

"Ah, yes. Thank you," the Doctor broke in. "But in less than a minute, guards will enter this room, so if you don't mind…"

"Thank you," Kim said, letting go of Tegan. She briefly looked at the Doctor, who did not in any way invite to be hugged and so she didn't. "Thank you, both of you. I really hope that I'll meet you again. Keep an eye open for the Vañavara; that would be me, if this plan succeeds."

With that, she quickly went through the door and left the TARDIS, which immediately started to dematerialise.

ooo ooo ooo

"I've never been much to goodbyes," Tegan grumbled as she looked at the Doctor, who was once again entangled in a heap of wires and cables. The TARDIS worked again, but there were still glitches to be fixed and errors to be corrected. "Is it something you know, when you said we would meet again?"

"Yes, off course it is," the Doctor huffed back. "Could you pass me the sonic screwdriver?"

"The Vañavara," Tegan continued as she passed the instrument. "What is that?"

"The prototype, I told you about," the Doctor replied, crawling in under the console again. "She got the idea about stealing the craft on her own, so I let her off where and when she wanted. I am sure she managed to steal it and get away without any serious problems."

"I sure hope so."

"It means the traveller," the Doctor explained from under the console, apparently being in an unusually talkative mood. "Vañavara, in the local interplanetary language. It's because she travels, having no home. Very poetic."

"Doctor?"

"Yes?"

"What is seppuku?"

"Why do you ask?" the Doctor popped back out from the console, studying his companion. "It's an old Japanese tradition, ritual suicide. With a sword. Part of the bushido-codes, also used on Honshu II."

"Oh…"

"Why do you ask?" the Doctor enquired again.

"William talked about allowing Ashim seppuku," Tegan explained. "And Kim talked about resolving to it, should her plans fail her."

"Ah, yes," the Doctor muttered, disentangling himself from the cables and coming over. "She despises the code, but will none the less stick to it, more and more, over the years. After all, it is all she has to bind her to her past, but I am not sure how much good it does her."

"What is it you know?" Tegan asked, going pale. "Is Kim going to do herself in? Is that it? Has all this been for allowing a self-serving suicide?"

"No, it's not that simple," the Doctor sighed. "It really never is, I think. But bushido will continue to play a part in her life, I am sure. And not only for the better."

"Does she or doesn't she?" Tegan demanded.

"To tell you the truth, I really don't know."

"Oh." Tegan seemed to deflate. "Well, what do you know then?"

"Far too much for my own good sometimes," the Doctor said with a slight smile. "And sometimes far too little for just the same good."

"You can be a real trial from time to time," Tegan muttered.

"Come now, Tegan; I may be a Time Lord, but I do not, as such, know the future any more than you do. I just happen to have a few more clues, that's all."

"But we'll meet her again, right?"

"Who knows," he replied lightly and patted her on the shoulder. "But for now, I think what we need is a nice cup of tea, don't you think?"

"And after that?"

"After that, my dear Tegan," the Doctor beamed. "After that, we're off to save the universe again."

It was a choice between scowling and smiling, and she knew how little effect the former could have.

With a smile, Tegan Jovanka followed the Doctor into the TARDIS corridors in the pursuit of tea.

ooo ooo ooo

_The End_

ooo ooo ooo

_Author's notes:_

_First a huge thank you to Patrice J, who has taken the time to beta-read this entire story, addressing both grammatical issues and problems with the story and characters. Without her, there would be really bad grammar as I really am not a native-English speaker. I try my best, but I am not sure I would dare to publish this without her help and support._

_Then another big thank you to everybody who has taken the time to actually read the entire story. I haven't written much fan fiction ever and this is my biggest such endeavour yet. The feed back is, as it is to most fan fiction writers, my best reward and I will seriously consider writing more._

_Kimoto Takita is a 20-year old RPG-character who has taken on an entire life of her own and thus resurfaces from time to time in my writings. Truthfully, she may have started out as somewhat of a 'Mary Sue', which also explains my net-name, but that is a long time ago and I can assure the reader that she is anything but an author-insertion now. Amongst others, she is both younger, better looking and far more interesting than a plain teacher such as my humble self. But who would wish to read about the adventures of a teacher? ;-)_

_That was all for now._

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_-KimotoCat, June, 2005._


End file.
